I mean, in a fantasy campaign. Have you ever used this? How?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1006948I mean, in a fantasy campaign. Have you ever used this? How?

In my 1980s AD&D campaign I used Ningauble's caves, it was possible to traverse the caves and come out in different periods on the same world.

I have run some BECMI adventures involving time travel - Nightstorm (travel to birth of the multiverse to oppose Thanatos) and part of Where Chaos Reigns (fight the pre-Borg Oard across multiple times to save the timeline).

Lots of times. One of the main thread of a campaign I ran was a player character who was half-Viridian (half demon) had it out for his father (a full Viridian). He perused all leads on the whereabouts of his father with the intent to kill him.

When they were around 8th level they found another lead and while investigating it were thrown back in time to an ancient Viridian First Empire (3000 years ago) estate. It was an adapted version of Castle Amber. I reskinned the weirdness to better fit my setting.  Instead of Stephen Amber being the one imprisoned it was a younger version of his father. The players investigated the situation and true to form decided to lift the curse thus freeing the character's father. The party's mind was utterly blown to the point that they didn't even think of attempting to kill the guy right then and there. Then the time travel spell broke and they returned to the present.

The deal was that the Father back in the past got screwed by a rival and was magically imprisoned. He was freed by his son. Then several millennia later the Father makes sure his son was born so he could go back in time to free his younger self. One of times I seen my friend utterly stumped.

Of course before all this went down, they saw that the biggest treasure was all the pristine First Empire art and sculpture and were stuffing their Bag of Holding with as much as it could carry.

So not only had time travel, I successfully pulled off a closed time loop as well.

I've used it a few times as a one-off plot device, very carefully circumscribed--this artifact sends you back to this place, at this moment in time, because reasons.  Not worth mentioning beyond that.

I've used it once as a full-blown, wide-open aspect of the campaign.  That is, I knew going into the campaign, but the players did not, that they would likely get their hands on the means to time travel midway through. In this case, it was a ritual spell that they could learn to cast.  Though the spell was not widely known, much less discussed, there were multiple organizations that had access to it.  The party became the wild cards in a massive power struggle between those organizations.  It was going well, but eventually ended due to dissatisfaction with the game system.  My favorite part was when two characters wrote a note to their younger selves and planted it to tell them to always have on their person an item that they knew they would need later.

Time travel is stupid.  

Its a crutch for lazy writers with weak philosphy, self indulgent metaphisics, and sophmoric literary capacity.

Quote from: Headless;1007039Time travel is stupid.  

Its a crutch for lazy writers with weak philosphy, self indulgent metaphisics, and sophmoric literary capacity.

You just jealous because you can't pull off a decent closed time loop.

Well yes.  

As long as you're not writting for star treck I guess its ok.

Quote from: Headless;1007045Well yes.  

As long as you're not writting for star treck I guess its ok.

Oh I have that covered as well. The best single session of tabletop roleplaying I ever ran was a session of FASA Star Trek.

Remember this is was circa 1987.

The players were on the USS Challenger and sent to mark off the area with subspace warning beacons where the USS Defiant was lost and the USS Enterprise ran into trouble. They were given a special one time warp injector coil in case the instability expanded and they need to get the hell out right now.

So the mission was proceeding routinely when a Klingon D7 exited the instability. All hell broke loose but the area expanded at the same time and the Challenger was caught in the expanded region. They used the injector to break loose and successfully returned to normal space.

Except the Federation subspace network was down and there was no signs of any of the nearby Federation outposts. After a long range sweep they found a operating subspace network deep in the core of Federation space. More strange that it was using protocols based on that of the old Andorian Star Empire of the 22nd Century.

So the Challenger made the long trek back and made contact with a Andorian outpost. It was a little tense and there was a duel involved but they managed to establish peaceful relations with the Andorians. They were given permission to proceed to where Earth was. When they arrived there they found the planet devastated from a nuclear war. Analysis indicated the radio isotopes originated from the year 1962. The conclusion was that in this place, the Cuban Missile Crisis turned hot and the planet was devastated and humanity wiped itself out. Hence no Federation only a Andorian Star Empire and a much larger Klingon Empire.

Luckily for the players the data for the time slingshot that the Enterprise was in their database. For about five second the resolution to the situation seemed obvious. But then the Science officer player spoke.

QuoteBut what about the Andorians and the rest of the people here? What right do we have to erase their lives?

 My god what ensued was absolute the best display of roleplaying I ever seen. We are talking a deep discussion of ethics and what right. The player who plays the Captain is generally pretty solid about taking command but even he admitted that he didn't know what to do. Finally he called a halt to the conversation after 1/2 hour and literally went out of the room to think.

He came back, and told everybody that in the end their duty was to the Federation, and we are dealing with was a case of interference by the Klingons. It sucks for the current timeline but the ship is going back to 1962.

So the Challenger slingshotted back to September 1962, hid behind the Moon. When the Klingon emerged from their own slingshot and was preparing to fire on the US blockade of Cuba, the Challenger surprised them and were able to destroy the Klingon vessel.

Then they slingshot back to the 23rd century and found the time-line restored to normal.

So yeah, alternate history, cheesy time travel, rubber physics, and Star Trek in one glorious package.

I once ran a campaign very heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger, so lots of time travel but with predetermined times that could be visited.

If you set up the rules for how you want time travel to work before hand, and do your best to ensure you're internally consistent with the rules you've come up with, and make it difficult if not impossible for the players to completely surprise you with time travel shenanigans, it can work out alright.

Chronomancy is the One Thing in my D&D games that causes the Gods to unite in order to disrupt. Time travel being far too dangerous to the multiverse.

I don't even know where to start answering this. We've used time travel so much it became a regular thing. I even had a game where I ended up going back and forth between scenes with two groups of the same characters in two different time frames and when they diverged off to a third group, one of the players threw up a white flag and begged me to stop because I "broke his brain". That's not even touching on Doctor Who games.

Quote from: Headless;1007039Time travel is stupid.  

Its a crutch for lazy writers with weak philosphy, self indulgent metaphisics, and sophmoric literary capacity.

Spoken like someone who's never time traveled.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1007473Spoken like someone who's never time traveled.

Touche.

In all seriousness, I've done this a couple of times. Of course, in Mystara it's even canonical, since the Blackmoor series of modules take place in the distant past of the setting.