Any Time Travel in Traveller?
- Thread starter Shonner
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Only going forward.
A proposed MT adventure, and the relics from TNE.
It's also mentioned as an area of research for Imperial Research Stations.
A proposed MT adventure, and the relics from TNE.
It's also mentioned as an area of research for Imperial Research Stations.
Is that the "Fast Forward" adventure, where the players are in cryoberths, and reawakened at pivotal moments in history?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
That's the one - shame it was never published 
Yup, it's only "Going Forward" time travel and then, with the exception of the proposed MT adventure, the PCs usually deal with the fallout rather than do the traveling themselves.
That being said, there are a lot of TNS items or other color text which mention "twisted" time and then usually in conjunction with jump drive. SJGames TNS has had two recent entries dealing with a major Confederation warship suddenly exiting jump in an Imperial Rim system circa 1120 something. There's mention of a futuristic TL16 scout ship with dead human occupants being recovered in the Marches. There's another mention of an IN warship coming out of jump and it being discovered that 100s of thousands of years had passed within the ship while in was in jump space. One of the DGP 4 Knights adventures featured the discovery of an Ancient "statis loop" of some sort complete with a sophont inside which is a nice little homage to Niven's "Known Space" series' Slavers.
Shame about the MT campaign. I would have liked to see it along with the Black Duke sourcebook and the Omnesium(?) quest.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
And the concept was also used for the "Next Gen" episode with Scotty imbedding himself in a transporter loop for a hundred years or so.
I use it, and steal the term "corpsicles" from Niven.
Don't forget Anne McCaffrey used the "cold sleep time travel" concept in some of her novels... starting with the character Lunzie from the 1978 novel Dinosaur Planet, who had already experienced two accidental multi-decade-long "emergency cold-sleep-berth" episodes before the book starts, and enters another at the book's end (not resolved until the 1984 publication of Dinosaur Planet Survivors).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_Planet_%28novel%29
Lunzie's history, along with her several multi-decade "cold sleep" events, is more fully explored in the 1990 novel The Death of Sleep (co-written with Jodie Lynn Nye).
This one wasn't sold specifically as Traveller, but:
There was an adventure in an old (iirc) Dragon Magazine from the late-80's which dealt with a Vargr somehow sent back in time to Victorian London. Iirc, the Vargr couldn't speak even Galanglic, was addicted to some drug (i think), and went 'crazy'. He was (in this story) supposedly responsible for the "Jack the Ripper" killings. A party was somehow sent back to retrieve him (or went with him).
Sorry, don't have the magazine anymore, so don't know/remember too many other details.
There was an adventure in an old (iirc) Dragon Magazine from the late-80's which dealt with a Vargr somehow sent back in time to Victorian London. Iirc, the Vargr couldn't speak even Galanglic, was addicted to some drug (i think), and went 'crazy'. He was (in this story) supposedly responsible for the "Jack the Ripper" killings. A party was somehow sent back to retrieve him (or went with him).
Sorry, don't have the magazine anymore, so don't know/remember too many other details.
"An Alien Werewolf in London" - White Dwarf issue 62, Feb 1985.
That's it! Thanks!
Well, damn!
I totally steal my heavy worlders from little bits remembered from that book. And looking back on it, is it just me or do the Thek come across as relatives to the Sol System Martians?
Laterness.
Craig.
I had totally forgot that bit. I need to go back and read those books again. And many thanks for letting me know there is a new Federation book with a tie in to my beloved Dinosaur Planet.
I totally steal my heavy worlders from little bits remembered from that book. And looking back on it, is it just me or do the Thek come across as relatives to the Sol System Martians?
Laterness.
Craig.
Nobody mentioned Time Travel by MisJump?
I tried to run an adventure that involved time travel but once again ran into all those paradox problems with traveling into the past. It was still fun (probably because it was when all concerned were much younger and less concerned with realism) but it impressed on me two things:
If you are going to time travel and don't want it to bollix up your current campaign timeline then you should either A) send the players to the future instead of the past, or B) send them to the past but make in an alternate universe timeline.
'B' is what I'll do if I ever try it again. That way I can even have fun revamping my current campaign into some Doctor Who-ish dystopian alternate reality that the players can mess it up all they want and still save the day without turning my current game into a train-wreck. Besides, they are already in the future so what would going farther in time do other than add more chrome, streamlining, and fins to the starships?
If you are going to time travel and don't want it to bollix up your current campaign timeline then you should either A) send the players to the future instead of the past, or B) send them to the past but make in an alternate universe timeline.
'B' is what I'll do if I ever try it again. That way I can even have fun revamping my current campaign into some Doctor Who-ish dystopian alternate reality that the players can mess it up all they want and still save the day without turning my current game into a train-wreck. Besides, they are already in the future so what would going farther in time do other than add more chrome, streamlining, and fins to the starships?
Corpsicles I took from Integral Trees books, but the others are good as well, Cheers.
Like maybe the misjump sends them forward or backwards in time?
It was how I decided they would ever end up in a parallel timeline if I ever tried it again. See how long the players would take to notice they weren't in Kansas anymore.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Should be as soon as they see Spock in a goatee.
LOL - or else everyone is remarkably stupid and the universe run by a small group of exhausted scientists from some uncharted world.
CosmicGamer
SOC-14 1K
Mongoose Book 4 Psion covers some time travel.
It includes Temporal Manipulation as an advanced psionic talent. There are careers for characters in the Temporal Agency as a Time Warden, Time Monitor, or Timestream Nomad. A new skill: Science(Temporal). And rules for building time machines!
It includes Temporal Manipulation as an advanced psionic talent. There are careers for characters in the Temporal Agency as a Time Warden, Time Monitor, or Timestream Nomad. A new skill: Science(Temporal). And rules for building time machines!
So much for hard scifi in Traveller. Do they have plans for a TARDIS in there, too?
