Time Travel
I was watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban yesterday with my fiancée, and I started wondering how to handle time travel in RPGs.
It’s a common enough trope in movies, books, and even video games.
In literature, it’s easy enough to do because the author has total authority over what happens and when. However, RPGs are a collaborative effort, where everyone writes some of the story. How, then, do we get the “timeline” to work correctly?
Why Time Travel?
Before you even decide to travel in time, ask yourself why you’re swimming against the currents of time. Some games are all about time travel. Say you’re Time Agents working for Chrono, Inc. rewriting all the little things that “should not have been.” Akin to the TV show of the late 90’s, Seven Days. For this, the answer is easy, “Because it’s my job.” Usually, time travel like this is just the excuse for the adventure. However, this post is about going back in time a little bit to change a small thing that aids your character now.
The Butterfly Effect
When you change things, your changes have a ripple effect. You didn’t just stop the invasion of the moon, you also removed the impetus of all the Earth governments to put aside their squabbles and form the United Earth Organization.
Don’t forget to think about the implications—both major and minor—that your one change causes. Cause and effect. You should have a short list of things that change, even if it doesn’t have any direct effect on your story. Remember, you can always make a call back to a previous adventure to call attention to the ramifications of meddling in time.
How to Get Your Players to Buy In
So now that we know what is involved in traveling through time, how do we get players to “buy in” to the story? First off, tell your players that you’re including time travel. There is no way for players to get behind it and act accordingly if they don’t know about it.
The Leverage RPG has a mechanic for flashbacks, and we can tweak this a bit to handle going through time. In brief, you spend a Plot Point to declare what you’ve done in the past, and how that helps you now. That’s a great starting point. We spend a Plot Point1 to declare what we’ve done in the past—or what we’re going to do in the future—that helps us now.
Now that you know what’s been messed with, you need to actively work towards that goal, so the player who messed with time needs to keep track of what they’ve done. It might be a good idea to limit the amount of things tampered with to three2 or so. If your game has ways to give incentive to your players for partaking in particular actions, give them one so they get a bonus when following through with the change they’ve done3.
Traveling Through Time
Now your players are in on the idea of time travel—note that doesn’t mean their characters know about it just yet—you need to actually move through time. A chronosphere, a tricked out classic car, or a simple necklace is all that is needed to make the leap.
Once in the “past,” your player’s characters are free to do whatever they want, as long as it follows the rules of time travel. Note that not all time travel has the same rules. In Harry Potter, you can’t be seen, but can do pretty much anything you want. In Doctor Who, you can’t change major event in the timeline, while in Seven Days, you do whatever you can to stop the tragedy.
Once back in time, your players should know exactly what they’re there to accomplish. Remember that list they made? That’s their objective! They need to make sure they hit everything on their list, in the order it is listed. Anything that was done to assist in the present/future timeline must be done.
Fallout
What happens if they miss something? Well, let’s ask Harry about that. Remember when Hermione threw the rock at past Harry, and present Harry said “That hurt!”? Well, we can draw upon that—or draw upon whatever source you’re drawing your time travel from. If you don’t do what you were planning on doing, what you tried to help doesn’t after all. If the change was to avoid a physical confrontation, the character takes damage from the fight that shouldn’t-have-happened-but-did. If the travel influenced someones decision, that decision gets revoked, making the opposite happen.
This goes back to the butterfly effect, above. If the change didn’t happen, “retcon” a bit to allow the story to fit the non-event.
Wow, time travel is confusing. I hope I didn’t break your brain too much, there.
What about y’all? Have you ever done time travel in a game before? How’d it go? Have you ever thought about doing a session of time travel? What are you tips?
1Use whatever is analogous in your game. Fate Points, Plot Points, Action Points, Bennies, etc.
2This number is completely made up. It’s your game, start small and work your way to what’s comfortable!
3In FATE, give them an aspect. If you’re playing Cortex Plus, make it a temporary Distinction.
