I've been interested in playing in a time travel game for some time, but haven't seen one posted.   I've run quite a few time travel systems, but haven't gotten to play in many.

I'm up for most any system: Time & Temp, Timewatch, Timemaster, Fate, etc.

I wouldn't mind a GURPS time travel game.

GURPS would be fine, although I'd have to dust off my boxes in the basement and find the sourcebooks.  I'm pretty sure I'm a few editions behind by now. ;-)

Time travel is tricky stuff unless you just go movie rules and do what ever works best for the story lol

Generally though if your going with how time travel should work, there only a few possibilities..... and traveling back in time, if possible at all, don't work out to well for a game.

Your ether:

A - invalidating everything your doing viea unpleasant paradoxs

B - creating an alternate timeline and returning to your own, where nothing has changed because it's still your time line....

C - creating an alternate timeline and going forward into it's future where there is the future you of that time line already there, because it's not your time line it's their's ...

D - while traveling back in time is possible but with some very unpleasant results or poor 'aim'

Generally saying though, travel back in time shouldn't be possible.

So it's not a very popular subject to run with.

Only thing I've seen where travel back in time is possible is Mage in ridiculously over powered games. And then the ease at which paradox is caused is ridiculous, and it's very very easy to get erased from existence.
This message was last edited by the user at 02:25, Mon 28 July 2014.

There are three ways to look at backwards time travel (forwards is actually possible in physics).

Stiff time and Flexible Time or just some midpoint.

1.)  Stiff Time: Pretty much what Azraile was talking about.  Just the act of backwards travel either creates an alternate timeline or forever alters the future.  The further back you go w/ this type of time the worse things are.  Even minor changes cascade into massive consequences.  And the longer you're there, the worse it gets.  As a game, I agree w/ Azraile, not much fun.  Rather than this type of time game go with another or do a "Sliders" type RPG.  With Stiff time, the first time time machine was used it would likely destroy the future that had the machine.

2.)  Flexible Time:  The opposite of Stiff Time.  Time itself has an 'autocorrect' function.  Say you kill Hitler, someone else very similar takes his place.  Some of the small details are different, but the major result is the same.  The further back you go in time, the less chance you have of making any real change.  There will just be less effect noticeable when you get back.  Imagine time like a large pool with your 'starting point' at one end and the beginning of the earth at the other.  Your changes to time itself are like throwing small rocks into the pool.  The further away from your 'end' the rock is tossed the smaller the ripple will be at your end.  Like the other one, not particularly playable, but for different reasons.  This doesn't make a fun game because whatever they do, doesn't really matter.  Time travel would mostly be the province of researchers and professors.  The odd criminal trying to snag artifacts or make his family rich.  You might do a game or two with terrorists trying to pull off major changes, but that will quickly stretch credibility.

3.)  Mix Time:  This is where you have a truly playable 'zone' of time travel.  Consequences of travel can happen.  Time travel isn't as futile as with FT and isn't as game ending as with ST.  This is where everything else comes into play.

The Rules of Travel

You need to come up with some very hard and very strict rules of how time travel works and how people deal with it.

1.)  The range of travel.  Is there a minimum 'distance'?  This might be a good idea, as most time travel games really require some sort of adversary to really have playability.  Most of the believable bad guys would only want to use the machine to go back a few years or possibly days to commit their time crime if it were possible.  It makes the most sense from a criminal prospective.  You have the most reliable info.  My suggestion for this and other reasons is to not cross time streams.  Hence, a safe "minimum" distance.  Too far back, and you start putting a huge burden on yourself as the GM.  I certainly wouldn't want to think about how the world was changed if the PC's can't stop the murder of baby Alexander the Great.

2.)  As a rule, the time machine itself is either a time AND space machine or it's a fixed device that can manipulate people with some sort of tracking device.

3.)  How accurate is it?  The more accurate the machine is, the more potential abuse you can have of it.  That works both ways.  It makes the villains harder to stop and the PC's able to screw up a whole adventure because the realize they just need to show up before the bad guys.

4.)  Other rules of time travel.  Look at any time travel movie, show, or book for these.  Doctor Who has "Fixed Points in Time".  Things that are just immutable, period.  Quantum Leap had the traveler taking over the body of a person.  Maybe you can't even speak of the future.  Maybe you don't even REMEMBER you are from the future, just have a vague idea of your mission.

5.)  Don't cross the streams.  I can't stress this enough.  Time travelers can NOT be allowed to meet themselves.  Paradox galore here.  "Damn, Joe died on that last mission, let's travel back and give ourselves some fire support!"  Not only does this introduce MASSIVE paradoxes, you can end up with a whole campaign of the players going back to fix every little error they made.  And if they can do it, so can their enemy.  You would end up with whole armies that are comprised of only 5 people on each side.  You are going to have to figure out the why's and how's of it not working and the results if someone tries.  Don't budge an INCH on this one.


There are many other points, but those are the main ones.  Another way around all the possible paradoxes is that time travel backwards goes only back to the beginning of the invention and construction of the first machine.  You end up with just a future version of the game this way, but have much more flexibility with it.

Playing a time travel game or running one will be a hugely difficult thing.  You are basically going to need to either have a LOT of set in stone rules or be a history major that can instantly give people an idea of the results of the English winning the Battle of Hastings, Hitler learning from the mistakes of Napoleon in Russia,  the French not agreeing to the Louisiana Purchase, and so on.

Yes making up your own rules in the 'naritive' sense of time travel works.

Real time travel would not be a good story system. So you have to make your own 'movie magic' time travel laws.

And yes there some very key rules to make things easier for the game.

Quantum Leap is the most provable form of traveling into the past, the limit to your own life is a good limit but not necessary.  There is evidence that thoughts can exist outside of time and space, so it's a stretch but possible to be-leave that minds can exist outside of time and space and that they can be switched places while having messages sent lol

It also makes it hard to go back into the same time, imposable into that body.

I find that I think implicating the Mage system would be very good to work in any system.

In the system any changes made in time of significance causes paradox. Not sticking to the way the persons life was in the quantum leap thing or standing out to much in the physical travel sense causes these points to build up. The higher and higher it builds the more unstable things get.

A noticeable change will cause at least 1 point, while something that causes changes to history books or using future technology at least 5

past 20 points or so destabilizes the time line and nothing you do has any affect in the future...

past 30 or so it destabilizes the time line and you don't come back... you might not ever have existed now o.o

Though that's a little strict if you ask me and I would change it to 20 you lose contact with the present, 25~30 your actions have no affect possibly automatically returned, 35~40 your erased / lost


Fixed points, points that have had to much time travel into and are no longer safe, places where you have already been or some other limiters are all encouraged to keep them from changing plot points.

If you haven't checked out the Timewatch RPG, you should.  It allows for all the crazy time travel hijinks that players want to do, in a nice framework.

Have you ever read the AD&D (2nd edition) Chronomancer game accessory? There's some interestng stuff in there.

Argh, wish I could run Timewatch but time is what I don't have.

I'd also be up for some time travel shenanigans. I'm pretty flexible with what that would look like, be it time traveling police, those lost in time, or something with Chronomancer (though I know little about AD&D).

As for how to deal with time travel, it's best to not think about it, how it works, or paradox. Time travel works, or doesn't, and that's that. There's just far too much nonsense surrounding it that makes it not fun when you try to rationalize it.

Anyone seen Steins;Gate and how that deals with time travel? I'd love to deal with a game that has the timeline around them change due to choices made like that does...

Haven't seen Steins Gate, but time travel shenanigans and having the timeline change is what I'm after.  I'd love to play in a Timewatch game rather than run them; I just don't have time, either, to run another game at the moment.

Could always do it via Chrono trigger style. Where ultimately most of the things you do already happened The way you did it. Just the histories are vague about those periods and attribute your actions to other people, or the descriptions are to vague to be of any real use.

Then again that might imply a carefully scripted game, or even allow the gm to create some off the wall changes based on player actions.

Just thoughts, I never messed with time travel.

This message was deleted by the user at 03:36, Tue 05 Aug 2014.

I've been thinking about this myself. I'm more interested in time travel as a way of travelling to interesting settings than the whole time-paradox, rewrite-your-past thing. So my RPG time travel works like this:

Turn the dial to a certain setting on your time machine and press the red button.

You emerge at a time that's randomly selected from the 14 billion years of the history of the universe, but strongly biased towards the recent past. About equal chances of getting WWI trenches, knights on horseback, cavemen, dinosaurs, sterile rock, or empty space.

Spend a year doing whatever you want to mess with history.

Press the red button again, and you return one year after you left. History is exactly the same.

Wait a year, turn the dial to exactly the same setting, and press the red button. You end up two years after you arrived the first time, in an alternate universe that incorporates everything you did.

Now, in some sense that's not actually time travel, just travel to a series of historical or prehistorical settings. But it solves most of the problems while preserving the fun.

I would play that, Gareth3.

In reply to Tortuga (msg # 16):

Thanks. It's based partly on Dr Who and partly on GURPS Infinite Worlds, so I suppose it would be best to run it with GURPS. I thought up a background where the near future gets invaded by the far future, so they steal a time machine from the invaders and flee to the past, planning to recover and strike back. Their main base is Hamilton, New Zealand in 200 AD. They also have a mining colony in Ontario in 1483 AD, and a space station 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the entire Universe is at room temperature. Oh, and a Manhattan office building in 2008 AD. The PCs job is to find new, profitable time periods while avoiding the far-future invaders.

Any GMs out there now who are interested in running a time travel game that's not just a travel game?

Continuum got mentioned in another forum, and that's a system I've always wanted to play in, too.