12/29/22: Time-travel Shennanigans
I’ve been listening to a new podcast lately: Ludonarrative Dissidents. It’s three guys around my age talking about a different game each episode. I enjoy that they have similar perspectives to my own. But this isn’t about the podcast.
They did an episode on the game Continuum, which is time-travel game from the 90s (that I also happen to own). Anyway, because it’s a 90s game, it’s overly complicated which is why I probably read it once after I bought it and has been sitting on my shelf since. The podcast reminded me of the game and its setting which gave me notions about running something similar.
Here’s the basic idea: the player characters have been pulled from their own timelines at the moments of their deaths and drafted by The Fixers, a group of time-travelers with the stated goal of “keeping the timeline pure.” The Fixers tell the PCs that in the deep future is a utopia in which the human race has evolved to amazing heights and, for that future to happen, they have been given the duty of keeping events in the proper order.
Problem one: the PCs are warned not to go to that future because the ascended humans don’t want them around and will get mad.
Problem two: there are anarchist jerks who don’t believe The Fixers company line (the Narcissists) and have decided that they can do whatever they want with time to make things better (for whatever value of better they might personally have).
So, the PCs are tasked with Quantum-Leaping around to fix things that they are told are wrong with the timeline by bosses they’ve just met and have fed them a story of a bright future with a wink and a smile. Along the way they will meet so called Narcissists who will feed them other stories.
Who will they believe? Will they try to sneak a peek at Utopia? Will they become fed up and decide to become Narcissists?
I think it would be an interesting game.
System-wise, I would probably bash together something based on Blades in the Dark, as I did with the werewolf hack. I like the player-facing rolls and the relative simplicity of the system.
Give me a week or so (when it’s not the holidays) and I’ll have something ready to go.