 November 21, 2009 - 10:01pm | Time Travel and parallel universes; could you, would you use them in gaming? I was over a friends house watching the latest star trek movie, which according to the director's commentary is a not standard time travel story. When it suddenly occured to me that the story isn't about saving a planet, star system, galaxy, or universe or even a civilization but rather the story is about saving the relationship of the original characters. It works cause people care about the characters If there is any one product that has shamelessly revelled in time travel its Star Trek You sort of expect it after a while if you've been a fan as long I have. So would you ever use it in SF or any other RPG you play? Time travel works if you set something at jepordy that the people involved care about. How to make players care about the jepordy in your game? I would suggest a few strategies: 1. threatening the defining SF adventure (Volturnus) with an alternate outcome or another beloved adventure like Dramune Run 2. a return to the present that is radically changed and they nolonger own a star ship. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 22, 2009 - 3:01am | Yeah the writers for star trek have been riding the tardis train to much. I've played Dr. Who Rpg and had fun with it. Never really used it in SF, did play with the multiverse idea a lil. Gold is for the mistress-silver for the maid-copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.But Iron-Cold Iron- is master of them all |
 November 22, 2009 - 7:54am | I did a time travel gig in D&D once and Rifts. It fit better in Rifts do to how messed up everything is. Even then the pc's "became" one of the people from the past and were along for the ride. There was no way they could really change anything. I did a Bermuda Triangle in space type thing where a weird effect from an out of synch jump drive allowed a pc to walk from his ship into one that was lost years ago. I like to throw in weird and mysterious stuff every few adventures, but I stay away from time travel stuff because I think its difficult to justify. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 November 22, 2009 - 9:47am | Time travel is the standard Star Trek writer's crutch, used for when they've exhausted the two other plot ideas bandied about the franchise. Don't even get me started on the new Train Wreck movie. My opinion, time travel and SF go about as well together as time travel and Traveller, which go as well together as peanut butter, pickles, baloney and mayonnaise. The only instance I've seen it work in science fiction, outside of Doctor Who, is the B5 episode "War Without End," and only because a) JMS did his usual sterling job of writing, and b) Sinclair time-tripping 1,000 years in the past was necessary to balance out DeLenn's transformation and establish the future continuity of himself becoming Valen, G'kwan, Kosh, and founding families which would eventually give rise to Sheridan and DeLenn. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
November 22, 2009 - 2:38pm | Actually there is official TSR material for STar Frontiers that does use time travel. Villians of Volturnus- the choose a path book. But much of that book comes off corney especially the cube shaped four legged cat sized creatures that run out of the forest during a fire.  I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 22, 2009 - 3:29pm | I would never use a time travel story line. Too much continuity can go wrong with it unless you wrote the end of it first and then just used the time travel hook to get you to that end. But with some things writers seem to forget that if one group can do it then so can the other, unless the one groups is just so much more technologically advanced. But if they're that advance why the need to time travel in the first place. So I tend to stay away from it. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
November 22, 2009 - 3:30pm | Yeah, the art's a little funky on that... Only TSR choose your own adventure books I really got into were the ones pitting the Earth spacemen against the Cybotrons. It involved one time-travel adventure, which I ignored. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
November 22, 2009 - 3:33pm | I would never use a time travel story line. Too much continuity can go wrong with it unless you wrote the end of it first and then just used the time travel hook to get you to that end. But with some things writers seem to forget that if one group can do it then so can the other, unless the one groups is just so much more technologically advanced. But if they're that advance why the need to time travel in the first place. So I tend to stay away from it. I forgot, there was one modern SF/F film which used a time-travel(actually more Connecticut Yankee meets Night of the Living Dead) which worked for me. Army Of Darkness.... "So maybe I didn't get every little word exactly right." _______________________________ "Who the hell are you?!" "Ash. Housewares." "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
 November 23, 2009 - 12:51am | I have about 100 other campaigns I want to play/run before I travel in time. Same thing with the universes - I have enough trouble keeping up with our own space physics and races, thank you very much. |
November 23, 2009 - 11:34am | Lot of good points and I too have way too many ideas I'd like to pursue with Star Frontiers BUT.... I do think running a Volturnus adventure with PCs being backward travellers trying to preserve their future might have legs Maybe the Serrena Dawn was blown up in an attempt to derail the future by a time travelling pirate and the PCs are a Star Law version of Time Cop who go back and stop the Serrena Dawn from being blown up and doing so completely changes the outcome of the Battle of Volturnus- the Sathar establish a forward base for launching an all out attack on the Frontier. The PCs return to a radically changed future and discover a time travelling Star Devil is now in control of the time device. and a Sathar over run Frontier. The adventure can run in the new time line or be about returning to set things right. Maybe the PCs returning and encouraging the authorities in the past to organize an expedition to volturnus is the real back story on why a joint Pale and UPF fleet just happened to be doing excersises at Truane's Star. The UPF authorities weren't really buying the story but dispatched ships for "routine training" in Truane's Star. EDIT: New Idea! Play out the Volturnus adventure and if the players fail at the end of SF-2 especially where the module specifies the PCs are captured and killed after being horribly tortured by the sathar. have the PCs awaken X number of years (100?) in the future in a sathar controlled frontier where they were put into cold storage like many members and saved to be used as slaves or lab experiements. They've been dethawed and put into a holding pen as the most recent batch genetic lab experiements about to be used. They get a bit of exposition from another occupant of the holding pen and realize that their failure on volturnus has lead to this gruesome future. This occupant giving the exposition tells them he's in the holding pen awaiting cyber implantation because some members of the core 4 races have after a few generations have managed to develope a bit of immunity to sathar hynotic control and once he broke free of it he tried to escape the sathar by using the time device they recently invented but was caught. So the Volturnus campaign continues with a prison break and a desparate struggle to get to the time device and escape back to the past and change the out come of the battle that they failled at the first time. Oh yeah this individual that helps them also manages to go back and since he knows how to opperate the time device he goes last but goes to a different time because he's will become in reality [drum roll] the Star Devil and has his own agenda for stopping the sathar. Since the SD went back to an earlier time he is able to show up at the point in time when the PCs re-emerge in the past and take them into custody/ servitude. Is the Star devil really free of sathar control or is he actively trying to engineer the future the PCs saw. To deal with paradoxes I would write into the new past time line that the Star Devil did manage to prevent the PCs from getting off the Serrena dawn and they are now dead in this past. so you dont have the PCs meeting themselves. plus if they succeed this time then the future with the sathar controlled frontier never exist and the sathar never manage to invent a time device using eorna tech and volturnus crystals so that there is no more rampant time travel. Though till the PCs succeed you can throw sathar suicide squads at them as random encounters. Plus you'll have to re-write the voluturnus adventure with a larger focus on the pirates and maybe the star devil has taken steps to eliminate the eorna and other native races from being a factor in the equation. Just a thought- 1. it allows for PC failure, which as the module is originally written is a real possibility 2. it elliminates the time device in the end. 3. and extends the volturnus campaign in new directions. 4. the stakes and scope become not just saving Volturnus but saving the whole Frontier. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 23, 2009 - 12:33pm | Sorry for the double post but new ideas keep occuring to me 1. the above proposed use of time travel actually works in any adventure where failure could result in the sathar taking over the universe. and give the PCs a second shot at setting things right. 2. if used with Volturnus and incorporating the proposed origin of the star devil then the PCs will need a really up close and personal show down with him and a real chance to kill or be killed by him. something that reads like Ben kenobie and Darth Vader's showdown. "When I left you I was but the learner and you were the master now I am the master." "only a master of evil darth." 3. another twist to throw into the mix is the future sathar have developed a Borg "race" based on cyber implanted and controlled core 4 and Zebs races if you use them. These cyborgs can be part of the sathar sucide death squads coming into the past and after the sathar are defeated will be the genesis of the Borg in the SF setting. Possibly the Star Devil survives to become the Borg queen (she was kind of sexy in a creepy sort of way and might be fun to have in a campaign). [Oooh I suddenly feel the urge to modify one of my 40K necrons with a female chest and head] I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 24, 2009 - 12:00pm | Reference to Ash/Army of Darkness was a good one... See this, this is my BOOMSTICK. A double barrel Remington. S Mart's top of the line. Got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. You can get this in the sporting goods department. Retails at about $179.95. Shop smart. Shop S Mart. YOU GOT THAT!!! Classic, and a good example of time travel that can work (more or less) -- the standard go back in time to stop the bad guys from changing the future. But isn't this too cliche? If time traveling is called for, perhaps it would be more interesting to add creatures which exist beyond time (HPL's Hounds of Tindelos [sp] come to mind). Creatures/aliens which could be sources of great knowledge or terror depending on how your campaign encounters them. Anchor such creatures on a specific world or to specific items (they are not bound by time, but by space ...). Learning the source of their power would be the whole adventure/campaign against them (a lot of possibilities here...) and using their powers to defeat them could allow "limited" time travel... or simply strand the heroes in the distant past or future... |
November 24, 2009 - 5:16pm | 3. another twist to throw into the mix is the future sathar have developed a Borg "race" based on cyber implanted and controlled core 4 and Zebs races if you use them. These cyborgs can be part of the sathar sucide death squads coming into the past and after the sathar are defeated will be the genesis of the Borg in the SF setting. Possibly the Star Devil survives to become the Borg queen (she was kind of sexy in a creepy sort of way and might be fun to have in a campaign). [Oooh I suddenly feel the urge to modify one of my 40K necrons with a female chest and head] Ewwww. No, bad jedi, bad! I've always felt the Borg would've been an interesting race, if there had been a decent backstory on how the Borg became the Borg, and if First Contact never saw the light of day. IMO, of course. Returning to topic, Army of Darkness works well only because of Campbell's characterization and the scriptwriters choice to parody A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, Night of the Living Dead, and the Cthulu Mythos all at the same time in a way that worked. Standard time-travel fare it wasn't, and it was a good thing. I've noticed no one's mentioned the Observer Effect as related to time travel...the theory being that if an event is observed, it can't be changed; otherwise, you create a paradox. The PCs could try and timetrip back before the worms took over to try and change things, but the worms will still take over, because that's been observed in the future already, so, they'll either fail to stop the takeover or create an alternate timeline where they didn't take over, and the future they previously observed would remain extant in another timeline(laws of conservation apply here too, I'm reasonably sure). Also, if you factor chaos theory into the mix, the PC time-trippers will change the future just by going back into the past, maybe even bringing about the future they tried to stop from happening.... "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
November 25, 2009 - 10:36pm | I always liked the borg in the TNG series and the borg queen just creeped me out at the same time that she struck me as sexy some how. Unfortunately about that movie is the really bad points of the script that were just jarringly wrong. but the borg coming back into the past and their future gets wiped out making their very existence a paradox seems interesting but it also occurs to me that we're doing this on volturnus where the mechanons exist and maybe there should be a tie in to the mechanons somehow. If we have a paradox of a race that shouldn't exist interacting with the setting then the new time line will undoubtably not resemble what we know of the official timeline which isn't much as the time line is whack anyway. But my point is will the mechanon revolt happen? will there be yet another desparate cooporation between the mechanons and the PCs to deal with the borg? Will the borg attempt to assimilate the mechanons? what would happen with that? I particularly like a female star devil to be presumed dead and come back as the borg queen. making her this pheonix rising from the ashes to plague the PCs yet again. what if the uncontrolled borg in the past ( the sathar of the past dont know how to controll them) end up evolving into a rapacious conquest driven race and in the new future they will attempt to assimilate the whole frontier and the sathar. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 26, 2009 - 12:43am | what if the uncontrolled borg in the past ( the sathar of the past dont know how to controll them) end up evolving into a rapacious conquest driven race and in the new future they will attempt to assimilate the whole frontier and the sathar. We're knackered? "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
 November 26, 2009 - 1:16am | Continuity is tough enough to maintain in the present...Lucas proved that with six episodes of Star Wars by writing three that took place earlier in time and still getting things wrong despite already knowing how the future turns out. Now...I have had a character or two that was thrown into the SF universe via a "time warp" (a la Buck Rogers per se). No qualms on something like that, presuming there will be no trip back. Even the "forgotten cryogenic storage" works to place someone from several hundred years ago into the modern day game. Actually there is official TSR material for STar Frontiers that does use time travel. Villians of Volturnus- the choose a path book. But much of that book comes off corney especially the cube shaped four legged cat sized creatures that run out of the forest during a fire. Somewhere in one of many boxes in my garage is that book (and seven others from the series). I have to say even back when I was a pre-teen reading that book, much of it was "out there"...but if there was ever one thing from that book I might want to incorporate, it would have to be the collapsible hovercycle from the escape pod. |
 November 26, 2009 - 9:16pm | For those of you following the development of the Dark Tempest Setting for Frontier Space, you may recall my fondness for including wormhole travel which is basically how characters can transition from the core setting to the Dark Tempest Setting almost seamlessly without and back again without major continuity problems with the core setting. Kind of like Ravenloft in D&D, the pc's walk through this erie mist and on the other side of the fog they are in the dark realm of ravenloft. Well in FS, characters are caught, or maybe choose to enter, a wormhole and arrive in the Malestrom or Taratarus Sector of the Dark Tempest. Full of strange new technologies, races, skills, weapons, environments, to discover and adventure with. For SF, and this topic, you could always use alternate timelines, parallel universes or planes of existence as a concurrent event that does not effect the main timeline. When characters venture into the alternate setting, via whatever device, the change in events occurs there but not necessarily in the reality that they know. Consider the Mirror episodes of Star Trek for example. Characters could travel to the alternate universe, interact there, but it did not change what was happening concurrently with the main time line. Or maybe a twilight zone type experience. Either way, if continuity is the problem, remove continuity from the equation. If they are going to travel through "time" make it traveling to a different timeline. If you must use the same timeline, then yes, plotting continuity makes for a serious problem. My first comic book project is currently on hold due to such a problem until i can resolve a continuity issue that just keeps buggin my brain. |
November 28, 2009 - 7:36am | I did try and work with a time travel story once, but it got a little muddled. A character or characters had to end up traveling into the past to deal with the evil threat and then be trapped in a way that will allow them to return back to the future to finish dealing with that evil. The character would literally be meeting up with their own self, the past and future at some point. It creates a logic problem at one point. I didn't really make this idea for a SF game but a sci-fi story I've been working on. It might have made a good game, but I think PCs wouldn't have liked taking a backseat to the character I made the story for. The most they'd be in for would be to help the character acheive his goal. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
November 28, 2009 - 8:12pm | I especially liked how Western Union was used to send a message through time in Back to the Future. Thought that was neat. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 28, 2009 - 10:06pm | GURPS Time Travel suggested a couple of other reliable ways to send messages forward in time, including finding a law firm you know will be around in the future and using them to hold a message for you. The same trick will work if there's a bank(or credit union)you know will be around in the future. Purchase a safe-deposit box, leave your message there, leave the key with the appropriate people in the future before you even clock back to the past, and, there you go, two way time communication. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
