Travels through Time

You can see through time, try to reach through it, and eventually even travel through it.

Although all character choices are subject to GM approval, Travels Through Time is a focus that the GM and player should probably have a long conversation about ahead of time, so the player knows the rules of time travel (if any) that exist in the GM’s setting. A character with this focus can drastically alter a setting, if the rules of time travel allow it.

FOR THE GM�MANAGING TIME TRAVEL

Although time travel offers plenty of grist for the storytelling mill, it also brings plenty of complications. If a player chooses the Travels Through Time focus and you allow it, you need to decide whether the character can change history by traveling through time (at least, once they advance to a high-enough tier). The easiest way to manage time travel is to say that the PC jumps to a different timeline when they move forward or backward through time. Anything they do while displaced in time only affects events on that timeline.

The point the PC left becomes a nexus of many timelines. A character returning to that point might find themselves in their original timeline, in which case nothing they altered in the past affects their present or future, or they might be in a different timeline, where their past actions have had a great effect on the current world.

The biggest benefit of the multiple timelines approach is that it sidesteps the problems of paradoxes. Whenever a paradox would occur, the characters create another timeline instead. So if a PC goes back in time to a point before they were born and kills their young grandparent, they erase themselves from that timeline but not from their own timeline. Thus, the character would continue to exist in the (main) campaign timeline.

You can also use other methods for managing time travel, allowing characters to change past events to create a new future, paradoxes be damned. Or you might have the PCs merely observe, unable to interact with anything outside of the point you decide is the present.

If a time-traveling PC's choice at sixth tier is restricted to the Call Through Time ability instead of Time Travel, many of the issues discussed here never come into play.

Tier 1

Anticipation (1 Intellect point) Action

You look ahead to see how your actions might unfold. The first task you perform before the end of the next round gains an asset.

Tier 2

See History (4 Intellect points) Action

You touch an object, read the subtle echoes of its existence through time, ask the GM a question about the object's past, and get a general answer. The answers are often in the form of brief images or sensations rather than specific answers in a language you know. The GM assigns a level to the question, so the more obscure the answer, the more difficult the task. Generally, knowledge that you could find by looking somewhere other than your current location is level 1, and obscure knowledge of the past is level 7. After you use this ability, you have an asset on identifying the object.

Tier 3

Temporal Acceleration (5 Intellect points) Action

You or one willing creature you touch moves more quickly through time. The effect lasts for one minute. Everything moves more slowly for the affected character, while to all others, the character seems to move at preternatural speed. The character has an asset on all tasks until the effect ends. After the effect ends, the target is exhausted and disoriented by the experience, hindering all tasks for one hour.

Time Loop (4 Intellect points) Action

You call yourself from a few moments in the future to help you in the present. On the round you use this ability, your future self appears anywhere you choose within immediate range and takes an action. On the second round, you and your future self both take actions, and your future self ’s action is eased. On the third round, you and your future self both disappear. On the fourth round, you catch up to your future self, reappear wherever your future self initially appeared in the first round, and can take your actions normally.

Your future self shares your stats, so any damage that either of you takes applies to the same stat Pools. If your future self is killed, you and your future self disappear in the third round (as normal) and you reappear, dead, in the fourth round. Neither you nor your future self can use Time Loop again until you reappear as your future self in the fourth round.

In effect, Time Loop lets “you” take an action on the round you use it, two actions on the second round, and zero actions on the third round, and then you're back to normal after that. free level of Effort

Tier 4

Temporal Dislocation (7 Intellect points) Action

You disappear and travel up to one hour into the future or the past. While dislocated in time, you perceive events as they transpire from your position using your normal senses, but you can't interact with or change anything. If you project yourself into the past, you remain there for one hour, at which point you've caught up to the present (to anyone with you in the present, you only seem to flicker out of existence for a moment). If you project yourself into the future, you remain there until the present catches up to you (to anyone with you in the present, you vanish for one hour and reappear in the place you left).

Tier 5

Time Doppelganger (6+ Intellect points) Action

A perfect copy of you appears within an immediate distance. This doppelganger is probably a version of you from another timeline or the past. The doppelganger is a level 5 NPC with 15 health. It has your mind and memories, and you control it as if it were you in another body. In effect, while this ability is active, you have two bodies.

If the doppelganger uses any of your abilities that cost points, those points come from your Pools (including spending Effort). Controlling two bodies at once is difficult and distracting; while this ability is active, all tasks performed by you or the doppelganger are hindered. The doppelganger has no equipment other than simple clothing.

It remains for up to one minute, but disappears if killed or if you use an action to dismiss it. If the doppelganger is killed, you take 5 points of damage that ignore Armor, and you lose your nextAction. If you are killed while the doppelganger is present, you live on as the doppelganger (it becomes your character instead of being an NPC that disappears). In addition to the normal options for using Effort, you can choose to use Effort to increase the duration of this ability; each level of Effort used in this way adds one minute to the doppelganger's existence.

If you also have this ability from another source, you may use either ability, the doppelganger is 1 level higher, and it has 3 additional health.

Tier 6

Call Through Time (6+ Intellect points) Action

You call a creature or person of up to level 3 from the recent past, and it appears next to you. You can choose a creature that you've previously encountered (even if it is now dead), or (no more than once per day) you can allow the GM to determine the creature randomly. If you call a random creature, it has a 10 percent chance of being a creature of up to level 5. The creature has no memory of anything before being called by you, though it can speak and has the general knowledge a creature of its type should possess. The time-shifted creature does your bidding for as long as you concentrate on it, but you must use your action each turn to direct it; otherwise it returns to the past.

In addition to the normal options for using Effort, you can choose to use Effort to call a more powerful creature; each level of Effort used in this way increases the creature's level by 1. For example, applying one level of Effort calls a specific creature of up to level 4 or a random creature with a 10 percent chance of being up to level 6.

Time Travel (10+ Intellect points) Action

You and up to three willing characters you choose within immediate range travel to a point in time that you specify when you use this ability. The point in time must be within ten years of the present. For each level of Effort applied, you can travel ten more years or bring three more creatures with you. When you appear in the new moment in time, you do so in the same position you were in when you used this ability. Upon arriving at your temporal destination, you and the other time travelers are stunned for one minute. In order to return to your original time, you must use this ability again.

GM Intrusions: Paradoxes are created. Others remember past events differently.