Hi,
I'm planing a Storyline involving a mysterious time traveling artifact for an IRC-based sci-fi RPG.
And I'm really going to need some helpful advice from creative, funny, and/or wise game-masters. At the moment I'm in a pre-planning phase (as in "I have not really begun on making fixed adventure ideas") and thinking about the mechanics of such an artifact.
The current idea goes as follow:
The players find an artifact, after a long search, to destroy their mortal enemy, but alas the artifact is damaged and it seems not to be the weapon everyone hoped for.
In fact it is a time machine, that would allow to “uncreate” the enemy. If it wasn't for the damage.
The damaged artifact creates some kind of radiation, that sends people randomly through time and/or in alternative timelines.
Most Player Characters will remember the history of the original timeline, due to effects of being near the artifact and will have no or just an echo of a memory for the changed timeline. Some player characters might only remember the changed timeline or a series of changed timelines, if the player want's to change his character according to a new timeline.
So say due to a change in the timeline one character switches his gender. This Character might only remember a timeline in which he/she has the new gender and a set of alternative timelines akin to those that happened in the sessions before, but with the new gender.
I hope it's not to complicated.
Adventure Ideas would be: - To relive a single day again in a groundhog day manner.
- Some Things, like the status of a character suddenly changes.
- The player characters are suddenly back home, in a reality, where they never been “heroes”
- The history of the world is suddenly changed, the ussr won the cold war, the american colonies never rose up.
- A player character has a chance to change a single moment in his/her history.
- A player character has to chance history so that he and his partner will never become a couple.
So have you any ideas how the “mechanics” of the artifact could look like? How is it activated? How can someone "travel back to his time" in a time travel adventure? Are there signs of the artifact "activation"?
Any advice for this storyline?
Any “have to try” adventure ideas?