Bay 12 Games Forum

You're an ordinary person from any point in history, and you've found a time machine! What are you going to do with it? Well, that's up to you! Should you set right what once went wrong, quantum leap style? Go back and kill Hitler? Go to the future, accumulate technology, and use it to rule the past? Anything you want, you can accomplish here.

You see, as M. Oron was a rather eccentric scientist, his time machines actually come in all sorts of variants. Some were rather standard full suits, making the user look somewhat like an astronaut. Others were entire vehicles, letting you take multiple people and any number of items through time. Still others were disguised as every day items, like a pocketwatch or an Xbox 65536 controller. One heavily encrypted file contains plans for a time machine that was going to be built into a hovercar, and would only activate once you accelerated to 88 kilometers per minute.

Additionally, form aside, not all time machines are created equal.

Precision: Sure, travelling back in time is great... but you don't want to leap right into the middle of a WW2 battlefield! Increasing this gives you a much better chance of actually ending up where and when you want to go.

Power: Rather than leap only a couple decades at a time and risk something going wrong, wouldn't it be more convenient to just get it all done in a single centuries-long warp? Additionally, if you want to transport other objects that you can't simply carry (say... a tank, another person, or perhaps the Pyramids), you'll need a more powerful time machine to get it done.

Activation time: Being able to flee through time to escape tough situations is great... but if you need three uninterrupted hours to program your time machine, then that makes it rather difficult to successfully perform a jump in a combat situation.

Other? Proper time manipulation can let you do some pretty crazy stuff that a standard time machine won't be able to do. For instance, perhaps you want a specialized piece of equipment that will send you back along your own timeline (aka: Reset to a couple turns earlier), or one that will alert you to timeline changes (so you actually know what other people are doing), or perhaps protect yourself from temporal paradoxes. If you're willing to sacrifice a bit of versatility, such features can easily be added.

You see, obviously what you do in the past is going to affect the future, sometimes rather drastically. For instance, if an assassin went back and murdered your grandfather, then you're probably going to end up erased from existence entirely. However, it takes a little while for these sorts of changes to propagate through the timeline, so if you figure out what's going on quickly, you can race back to the moment of the paradox, and stop it from occurring... or go back, and kill the assassin's father, thus stopping him from existing, and preventing your grandfather from dying.

Additionally, there are other time travellers out there (mainly the players, but perhaps a couple NPC's), and they can easily go back and fight or otherwise interact with your past (or perhaps future) self. If the other player only does minor things (or things you don't notice), your personal timeline will proceed as normal. However, if they do something that would significantly change things (say... by trying to kill you), you'll gain control of your past character, and can do something to react.

Also, regarding other dangers... the further you go into the future, the more aware people and governments become of time travel, and in general there will be stronger safeguards to prevent people from abusing it. Additionally, if you do something particularly notable to change the past (for instance, helping the british defeat the American colonies in the war of independence), there's a good chance that people from the future might figure it out and come looking for you to stop you.

Also, if you create a true time paradox (by killing your younger self, for instance), then this can cause drastic and extremely dangerous effects on anything related to the paradox. (That is to say, it gives me the ability to do whatever on earth I please to you, and anything you've accomplished. Needless to say, this is a BAD IDEA.)

Oh, and one more thing. So far, nobody knows that M. Oron actually completed his time machine and scattered them across time, but if they ever do... well, if they stopped that accident with the temporal rift, or shut down his research before then, that would keep any of you from ever getting the time machines in the first place... (also known as GAME OVER.)

Name:
Time Period:
Background:
Apperance:

Strength: Physical stuff like swinging swords, punching things, that sort of stuff. Always helps in a fistfight.
Dexterity: Letting you aim the right end of a gun at the enemy, dodging, not being a complete klutz.
Endurance: Not being incapacitated after a paper cut. Just keep in mind, not even a [End: 6+4] roll would save you from a missile to the head.
Intelligence: Hm, maybe using the tactical nuke in hand to hand combat isn't the brightest idea. Also helps in using all that shiny future tech.
Willpower: You know, I hear that weak-willed people die more quickly to temporal paradox kind of things... If you want a bit more reaction time when it comes to stopping your past death (or being erased from existence), this might help.
Luck: If stuff goes wrong, you really, REALLY hope to get lucky.

For your own physical stats, you get 15 points to divide between them. Every 5 points is a +1, and if you have less than 3 points in a stat you get a -1 to it. There's no set in stone level up system, but it works logically... aka: spending a few months at a gym can increase your strength a bit, training under some legendary ninja master could increase your dexterity, studying under Einstein would help intelligence, and so on...

Time Machine Description: Here you get 5 points to spend, each point in a category is considered a +1, but the difficulty of time travelling varies widely depending on how precise/far you want to go.

Precision: 5 points - You can be accurate to within seconds and inches when it comes to where you emerge from the timestream, this is the kind of time travel you might see in really flashy combat. 4 points - Minutes/feet, not as good for flashy use, but nearly as good for practical purposes. 3 points - hours/roughly a hundred feet off or so, you can hit your mark pretty reliably. 2 points - days/a mile or two, it might be a good idea to come ahead of time to get your bearings. 1 point - weeks/anywhere in a small country. You can still attend historic events, but it'll take you a while, and you'll probably have to steal/get a job in the time period... 0 points - years/who knows? At this point you're just traveling to time periods instead of a specific date and location.

Power: 5 points - Entire armies, enormous landmarks, you can transport anything to any time and place. 4 points - You could bring a sizable group of people along with you,  or perhaps a smaller landmark. Can't move the pyramids though.  3 points - You can take pretty much anything up to and including a car. 2 points - You can take another person with you, anything more than that is a stretch. Additionally, here the time gap starts to be an issue, though you can still go a couple millennia at a time. 1 point - Nothing more than a backpack, and more than 500 years or so is risky. 0 points - You're lucky if your clothes came through with you, don't bother going more than a century at a time.

Activation: 5 points - instant, 3-4 points, a combat round or two, 2 points, roughly 5 minutes (non-combat round, or quite a few combat rounds), 1 point, several hours (Don't even bother trying this in combat), 0 points, several days (plan your exit in advance!)

Extra Features: These will vary depending on what exactly you want them to do. Something like a radar telling you about other time traveling devices nearby would be one point. A suit that completely protects you from time paradoxes would be more like five. Just tell me what you have in mind, and I'll put a price on it.

Most rolls will be the standard d6, but time travel rolls work a bit differently.

First off, you make a power roll to see whether your time machine has the energy. This takes the standard d6 format, but you have a bonus depending on your power level, versus a penalty depending on the attempted jump difficulty. Or to be more exact,

d6 + [Time machine power] - [jump power level]

4+ is a success,
3 is just barely a success, you get out of dodge but take a -1 penalty to precision.
2 is failure, you don't make a jump at all.
1- Trying to draw in that much energy damaged your time machine, you'll have to wait a while to try again.

Assuming you passed that roll, you then have to make a precision roll to see how accurate you are. It's the same deal as before.

d6 + [Time machine precision] - [jump precision level]

3+ is a success, jump complete!
2 is undesirable but not quite a misfire, and has your jump precision a level lower than intended.
1- Say hello to the dinosaurs for me.

One more thing, regarding activation level, you can try to activate your time machine more quickly than it was designed to, in case you're truly desperate... but keep in mind, every level of activation you try to cheat through is a -1 penalty to BOTH your power and precision rolls.

Name: Carmen Sandiego
Time Period: 1980s
Background: Carmen was abandoned as a child, and grew up in a series of San Francisco foster homes. From a young age she proved remarkably adept at solving logic puzzles, and gained notoriety for solving a local burglary. That incident provided a connection with the SFPD, where she got a job as a detective after high school. After a brief but spectacular career that saw a flurry of cases resolved, Carmen became bored of catching dimwitted criminals and sought a greater intellectual challenge- outwitting the best and brightest of the SFPD. Her life of crime began at the age of 26, and after an eventful year that saw her pull off two incredible heists, Carmen found herself cornered by FBI agents working with her former colleagues. On March 13, 1984 she ran through a junkyard praying for a working automobile to make a getaway in, and found herself facing a miracle lifeline- one of the Time Machines of M. Oron.
Appearance: See above

Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Endurance: 2
Intelligence: 5
Willpower:  3
Luck: 0


The Time Chopper: Carmen Sandiego's time machine resembles nothing so much as a brilliant red helicopter. In fact, it functions in much the same way as an ordinary helicopter would, except that it does not appear to require any fuel and, of course, it can jump through time.

Precision: 1
Power: 4
Activation: 0

Name: April Eploc
Time Period: 1925
Background: April had always chafed at restrictions. She was a daredevil at heart, which had been encouraged by her uncle, a mischievious man who April enjoyed pulling pranks with. She didn't want to care about the restrictions of society. If she wanted to do something, she was going to do it! This made her a bit embarassing to those that knew her, and especially to her family- she was this young woman going off to do god knows what and she was hardly respectable! She got a bit of backlash this way. This didn't stop her though- growing up until 20, she had a life of adventure. That's not to say she stopped- no, in June, at 20, she vanished. Noone knew why- except April herself, who had found some flashy sort of device- it was really, really cool but she had no idea what it was! Well, she never let that stop her. Testing out the thing, she ended up not in the field she's been running in, but somewhere displaced in time...

Appearance:
April is a lithe young woman, 20 years of age, who is built like an acrobat. She has flame-orange hair that's braided to her shoulders, and leaf green eyes. She usually looks to be ready to adventure- looking quite energetic. She is 5'7'' and of slightly (but not very) light weight. She prefers to wear simple pastel yellow clothing, which, in the fashion of the time, is a pastel yellow chemise (1925s chemise, not modern chemise, so basically not particularly provocative, a simple dress.) that she seems to have cut a few ragged holes in while running around adventuring, and patched them.

Strength: 3.
Dexterity: 5- she's an acrobat and an adventurer, to the dismay of her family.
Endurance: 0- amazingly for someone who adventures so much, she doesn't take injuries well. She wasn't built for it, it seems...
Intelligence: 3
Willpower: 3
Luck: 2

Time Machine Description: Her time machine is an advanced PDA, basically, a little computer a little bit larger than smartphones today. This doesn't mean April knows how to use it well, having come from 1925- she mostly just mashes buttons. The thing is actually connected to a server floating in time which lends it the power it needs to function, but since the accident it hasn't lent it the power or the precision it's needed.

Precision: 0- the thing's a little time PDA, the server connected to it is barely reaching it, and April doesn't know how to use the thing well at all. Do you think it's going to be precise?

Power: 0- it's a little PDA, and it was more powerful when the server functioned better- but the server doesn't function better, so it barely works.

Activation: 5- At least it can be activated quickly, though this is made confusing by the fact that it's been accidentally put into the hands of someone from the 1920s- but when handled well, the thing moves in a flash. April's managed to find the time travel button.

Extra Features: It's got a server going haywire in the time stream which is mostly responsible for it being extremely imprecise and non powerful. It should probably have a failure roll or something because April is a 1925-er trying to use an advanced computer. ((Mod note: Nah, you don't need to penalize yourself further. However, if you somehow manage to track down this server and fix it, it might give you a couple more points to allocate...))

Name: Epaphroditos of Athens

Time Period: Ancient Greece (around the middle of the Hellenistic period)

Background: Though raised on tales of great heroism and initiative with the full intent of creating a great man, Epaphroditos has always had serious problems making something of himself. He wasn't smart enough to be a philosopher, wasn't brave enough to be a general, wasn't good for much of anything. But in his mind, the words of his father always resonated clearly, almost accusingly: "Epaphroditos, my son, the world is full of opportunities, you only need to know when and how to take them." However, these opportunities always seemed to slip him right by, so he turned to alcoholism and general uselessness instead. Maybe he could become a poet or something if he drinks enough, he always thought. One day, however, the fabled opportunity of his life finally came in the form of an odd object he found while stumbling through the streets of Athens on one of his benders. Little did he know that this was one of M. Oron's time machines, a magnificent mechanism of great power, though also great complexity. After failing to sell it, he decided to begin messing around with it. He'd heard of things like these - you manipulated the gears and it gave you things. Maybe one of those things would actually be useful.

Appearance: A tall man, well-built and sporting a full head of dark brown, curly hair and an equally curly full beard. Has a perpetually bewildered look on his face.

Attributes:
Strength: 3
Dexterity: 3
Endurance: 3
Intelligence: 3
Willpower: 0
Luck: 3

Time Machine Description: The Arcane Mechanism - an iron and copper device, approximately spherical and one and a half feet in diameter, made up of all sorts of knobs, levers and gears that decide where exactly one wants to go by approximating the positions of stars and planets at that moment. Manipulating it is far from an exact science, as Epaphroditos finds, but it still seems to work about right most of the time.

Precision: 3
Power: 3
Activation: 1

Extra Features: Very Complex Bizarre Contraption (-2). ((Mod note: Untrained users suffer a -3 penalty to precision when using this time machine, this is reduced by making successful jumps. I'll give you the extra points, but at the cost of your earlier jumps being very FUN!))

Name: Ryan Mason
Time Period: Late 1990's to Early 2000's
Background: Physics undergraduate residing in the UK, and in his early 20's. Brought Dragged up by dad after mum died, emotionally cold, known to be prone to rage when pushed too far. Doesnt do friendships or sharing. Likes to take things apart, and building entertaining contraptions. Has had a number of brushes with univeristy authorities - they didnt like the railgun made during a lab practical, amongst other things. Ryan found the device while scavenging for materials in his uni department store room amongst some old thermionic valve gear and obsolete robotics parts.
Apperance: An athletic 5 ft 10, dark eyes, shaven hair, stubbly beard. Dresses in an unkempt manner - lots of torn jeans and old grubby shirts.

Strength: 2. Nothing special.
Dexterity: 3. Honed by too many computer games.
Endurance: 1. Too lazy to develop stamina.
Intelligence: 4. Smart lad, but not as smart as he thinks.
Willpower: 2. What cant be worked out with ease isnt really worth working out.
Luck: 3. Tends to land on his feet.

Time Machine Description: Sitting in a crate of small robotic arms, Ryan found the baton. Deactivated, it resembled a pistol grip with a cross section - suprisingly light, and not unlike a police baton, but with a dull silver colour. Squeezing the hand grip brought the device into life - a holographic GUI encased his lower forearm, with remarkably simple controls for selecting a time and place. However, the device is quite low powered, and operates on an energy conservation principle - if Ryan were to move somewhere else, something must come back to take his place.


Precision: 3 points: Good to the street block level, within a few days, assuming a suitble item can be found to swap with.

Power: 1 point: this is a one person/item device only.

Activation: 1 point: it takes time for the device to find a suitable object to swap with.

Special: The glove is swaps the relative position of objects in space and time - so for Ryan to move, something of a similar mass from the destination must be displaced to the origin. This could be another person, an item of furniture or even a Ryan shaped lump of rock (instantly fossilizing Ryan inside a mountain). If the object is strapped to something (for example, a large boulder), then off it will pop, to be replaced by something else of comparable mass... say a nice hovertank. A built in autoreturn timer is also a handy feature to return the glove once you are done with whatever it brings you from the past/future/wherever. ((Mod note: I am going to have so much fun with this.))

Name: Jack Robson
Time Period: late 1950's
Background: previously a well respected scientist, he was practically exiled to a mining town after nearly wiping Chicago off the map with a nuke during the Manhattan project (his name was convieniantly struck from the records) he tried at first to figure out how to get back at the government, but without any access to lab materials he eventually gave up and learned to live with the other inhabitants of the mine town. He believed that all was lost, until he found the artifact that is.
Apperance: 6'0'' and very thin. Looks like he never worked out a day in his life (looks aren't really decieving in this case). appears mild-mannered at first, but those who know him well know he harbors rage for the government and he is, at his core, power hungry.

Strength: 0 incredibly weak, going to need to fight with a gun, and that's going to be difficult.
Dexterity: 3 The reason for Chicago not quite being fried.
Endurance: 0 paper cuts really hurt, let me tell you.
Intelligence: 8 He speaks fluent techno babble, and actually understands what he's saying.
Willpower: 4 not a mindless drone, that's for sure.
Luck: 0 the reason for Chicago almost getting fried.

Time Machine Description: The Artifact, a small titanium orb found in a coal deposit underground. It has a small gold button on one side, and a blue button on the other, and red lights forming a ring around the center. To use it you simply think of the time and place you wish to go to, then the ring of lights light up as it "locks on" to you're destination. You press the gold button to travel, the blue is the extra feature

Precision: 3 points, good enough not to end up in Pompeii on volcano day.

Power: 1 point, now one's going with me, with the possible exception of one of their limbs.

Activation: 0 points, hopefully the percision keeps me out of accidental combat.

Extra Features: The Blue button turns purple as its wielders timeline starts being approched, and red when a paradox occurs. Pressing this button will start the artifact locking on to roughly the point where the paradox is occuring. ((Mod note: As this is vague and possibly underpowered, I'll rule that it works as follows: The blue button turns purple as other time travelers come closer to interacting with you in any meaningful way, and red once a meaningful change occurs, at which point you can use the red button to warp to that location in time.))

Name: Vash Aarons
Time Period: Wild West
Background: Vash was born into the Wild West, the son of a wandering gunman. Though efficient, his father was non-lethal, able to fire off 6 shots and only hit arms and weapons. He didn't meet his father until he was six, only hearing tales of his valor. When he learned his father's identity, he was inspired and went off in search of him. Being a boy of 6, however, he didn't stand a chance in the desert, collapsing out there. By luck, his father was the one to find him, and after swindling and begging, his father finally took him in.

He traveled his father, learning everything from gunplay to smooth words as he grew. Eventually, though, they split up, Vash's father leaving him both with many skills and a strong sense of morality. Vash made like his father, wandering, learning, and living. Perhaps not quite as well, but he survived well enough. After one conflict though, he lost one of his revolvers, but finished off his foes with the spare.

Out in the desert though, he found something interesting. A revolver, but like none he'd ever seen before. Glowing with a seemingly futuristic light, and filled with energy. As he lifted it, he accidentally shot himself, finding himself somewhere he'd never been before...

Apperance: Caucasian, with messy black hair and green eyes. He's smiling most the time, and wears a light jacket.

Strength: 2
Dexterity: 5
Endurance: 2
Intelligence: 3
Willpower: 4
Luck: 3

For your own physical stats, you get 15 points to divide between them. Every 5 points is a +1, and if you have less than 3 points in a stat you get a -1 to it. There's no set in stone level up system, but it works logically... aka: spending a few months at a gym can increase your strength a bit, training under some legendary ninja master could increase your dexterity, studying under Einstein would help intelligence, and so on...

Time Machine Description: Cyclone

Cyclone is a revolver, a six shooter. It can fire normal rounds, but he found it already loaded with a glowing green crystal bullet. When it's loaded into the firing chamber, the revolver begins to charge up, glowing with light. Ley lines on it also begin to glow with the same light, flashing blue and vibrating slightly when it's ready.

A series of dials and knobs on Cyclones barrel lets one set the temporal destination, changing a small display running down where the palm would rest. When the machine is ready, one simply fires at the travel target.

The bullet respawns after a few moments, ready to be loaded once more.

Here you get 5 points to spend, each point in a category is considered a +1, but the difficulty of time travelling varies widely depending on how precise/far you want to go.

Precision: 2

Power: 1

Activation: 2