How to Do Time Travel Good?

No one has mentioned Meanwhile... The TIME WIZARDS.

I'm disappointed in you Veeky Forums

that doesn't actually involve time travel though so it's not relevant

skrub-ttrpg.tumblr.com/post/152510921001/skrub-pre-alpha

This game has a significant and complicated set of rules concerning time travel, as it's one of the necessary components of beating it.

it's based off of homestuck though, which is mostly shit

TIME WIZARDS

Just skip time travel and hop into a dimension that exists as an exact duplicate of your dimension, just X years earlier/later.

This would, in the real world as well as in terms of explaining how shit works, actually be easier than performing time travel.

To be fair, the game wasn't the shitty part of Homestuck.

Time travel and RPGs will never mix together, because the first thing any player will do once they realize they are in a time travel story is to do stupid inane suicidal shit just to see what happens.

"Wait, this is the scene we were in last week, but from a different perspective! There, that's us over there!"
"I SHOOT MY PAST SELF WITH A POISONED ARROW."
"But why would you-"
"DESTINY CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO."
"That didn't happen last time. You can tell, because you are still alive. That would be a paradox."
"I SHOOT THE WIZARD WITH THE POISONED ARROW INSTEAD. BUT FIRST I WRAP A NOTE AROUND THE ARROW TELLING MY PAST SELF EVERYTHING THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN."

I was actually thinking about actually dealing with time ripples and stuff. Like party being split between different periods and working in tandem to overcome obstacles.

There's no such thing as a time paradox, there is just humanity's limited 3-dimensional view of time.

If you travel back in time and kill your own paternal grandfather, your grandfather dies, your father (assuming he didn't come with you and wasn't conceived yet) never exists, but you - that is, the you that killed your grandfather - are just fine. Because by definition you had to step outside of time and then reinsert yourself into time at a different point in order to time travel at all; i.e., as far as time is concerned, you only started to exist the moment you appeared in whatever time you traveled to. You were "marooned in time", your killing your grandparent, or even your past self, does not effect *you*, even if you then return to your native time (though obviously you're now a homeless bum when you do, since you never existed)

Similarly, it is impossible to travel to your own future. By which I mean if you had a chronoskimmer and used it to go forward you could certainly go to, say, 2020, but you would be in a 2020 where, four years ago towards the end of 2016, you just disappeared one day without a trace.

In either case, the universe doesn't fracture and end no matter what paltry thing you do or who you kill or what you prevent from happening. Time is made of sterner stuff than that.

Finally, time is somewhat "entrenched". In the grand scheme of things, most of the changes we can make to the timeline, don't really affect the timeline. Time is like a river, and changing the past is like throwing a stone into the river. The stone makes ripples, but those ripples fade; the stone remains in the river (unless you go in and take it out), but the river flows just fine around it.

Mind, some stones (changes) are bigger than others, and enough can change a river's course. Kill Hitler in the 1920s and you probably prevent World War II, or at least the World War II you do end up with ends up being drastically different.

Your players are assholes.
With decent people interested in a decent story, it doesn't pose any problem.

Which version?

I've got it, gimme a minute to upload and shit.

I posted it in the PDF share thread.

Third edition, the one where you have to add put a marbles in your mouth each round you're altering time and the spell ends once you lose a marble or cannot add another

>How to Do Time Travel Good?

Impossible, I actually spent some time triying to brainstorm how it could work and was not able to find a way to make it happen

>With decent people interested in a decent story,
Its an universe not an book

A mind without purpose will wander in dark places.
If you don't guide your players toward a goal, then it's not surprising they'll start doing all kind of shitty shenanigans, because otherwise they'd be bored.
Exploraiton in itself is a worthwile reward, but YOU as a GM need to make it interesting and fullfilling. After all, your job is to entertain them.

When will be get Narcissist
I've only heard tangential references to beta copies in 2008

>"No one actually knows how time travels [sic] works, yet everyone thinks they do"

bruh, Continuum literally has a part of character creation that basically reads "You learned how to do it to the point of natural ability then had your brain wiped so you can't teach others"

The best way to do time travel is to copy Bill and Ted. Have one narrative following the party's hijinks through time, and let them do the silly "remember a trash can" stuff, but only follow what the players are doing, don't get distracted by everything else.

I've tried running a game of Continuum, and it is nearly unplayable for all the book keeping required, and have used Bill and Ted style a few times very successfully.

Even managed a Harry Potter game where one person had a time turner by allowing them to spend a resource to be present in a scene they heard about later, but never actually going back and changing things.

I have a .pdf called Narcissit 0.7.
I hope it's not the real deal, it reads like goddamn Timecube.

Bruh
Bro
My dude
Could you link that shit? Timecube or not, I've been dreaming of getting my hands on a pdf of it.

see

www101.zippyshare.com/v/I2eIvKpt/file.html