[Timestream] Divorced Mechanics and Color

[Nathan P.]

Heya. I'm working on a new draft of Timestream (you can check the current draft http://www.hamsterprophetproductions.com" target = "new">here, in the Downloads section, if you wish).

I'm retooling the mechanics in a big way, and having a blast doing so (who woulda thought I would get so narrativist?), but I'm having a conceptual problem.

To wit: the resolution mechanics are feeling increasingly divorced from the whole Time Travelling thing. This doesn't mean that they don't support the game as a whole, because they do, but I feel like Travel and Temporal Manipulation are like modules attached to this vaguely universal rules system. This may be an effect of my effort to create a system that isn't setting-dependent, but I feel like I'm writing two seperate games - a system, and then a modification/add-on for that system.

This makes me uncomfortable, as I would ideally like it all to be wrapped up in one sleek little package. I mean, the game is about time travel, after all.

Have other designers walked into this problem before? Is it really that bad of a thing? Does this whole post even make sense?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Hrrm. I know the Forge orthodoxy is Integrated Design -- mechanics, setting, high concept etc. all go together -- but I personally am fond of "universal" systems and in fact trying to design one myself (when tiny baby and work allow). So I think adding on the Time Travel/Manipulation stuff as a "module" is not problematic as long as you don't fall into the trap of the add-on using such wildly different mechanics that it doesn't really fit; ideally you want it to be just another way of using your core mechanic.

To promptly quibble with myself: Time Travel specifically seems to call for a High Narrativist approach where characters can (for example) run a scene in the "future" without knowing exactly what events led up to it, and then work backwards to the causes. Perhaps, you could get bonuses whenever you attempted something in the "past" that lead to an established "future" (whether something the players did or real world history established) -- e.g. save Martin Luther King from being run over by a truck as a small child, or hide a gun in the trashcan Wednesday at 10pm when you've already played a scene set on Thursday at 6am in which you pull a gun from the same trashcan; conversely, you could get penalties when you attempted something that contradicted the established "future" -- e.g. the old "assassinate Hitler as a child" shtick or taking the gun out of the trashcan at 5am Thursday so it WON'T be there when you go for it in the scene you've already played.

Hrrm. Not being very clear. If you've seen the second Bill and Ted movie (Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, I think), the climactic scene is a comic version of what I'm talking about: "Well, when WE win this conflict, we'll go back in time to yesterday and set a trap for you -- right where you're standing!" [trap snaps shut] "Oho! But when WE win this conflict, we'll go back in time to yesterday and leave a key to open the trap -- right here by my shoe!" [trap snaps open]

But even that kind of thing could be played by adding bonuses and penalties to your core conflict resolution mechanic, maybe at the price of (in your game's terms) Time and/or Strain points.