Note: If you are a member of my
Emerald City Game, set in Supernatural Seattle, stop reading now. This is not for you. A few things will be in Spoiler tags at first to keep members of my Campaign from skimming and learning the secret.
Anyway, I'm GMing an upcoming campaign and I had a cool idea for some story mechanics, but...I need help ironing it out. The Campaign itself involves....
...Dun Dun Duh!
Background: Long story short, my upcoming adventure in Supernatural Seattle is going to involve a bunch of evils
, the PCs getting caught up in the spell and ending up in the past.
Why do this? Because I think it will be oodles of fun, especially because of our roster. You can read more about them on the OP site, but this thread's about the mechanics I want to use to run it.
This also assumes they...mostly don't screw up the timeline. I have though thought of a story reason why if they end up with a Grandfather Paradox, that paradox doesn't take hold of them until they reach the time they went into the past.
There are 3 mechanics I need help with:
The Bill & Ted Setup,
The Ripple Track and
Temptation of Time. I need to know if these sound solid and if there ware better ways to do it other than "Don't do Time Travel".
1. The Bill & Ted SetupI was thinking at the beginning of the Campaign, the PCs will get shoehorned a bit, but rewarded with Fate Points in abundance if needed. They will invariably get wrangled right where they need to be to travel back in Time without a hitch.
At the END of the Campaign when the PCs get back to the present...they have to set themselves up.
What I was thinking for this Mechanic was to give them lots of Compels and Fate Points at the top of the Campaign and keep a tally. At the end of the Campaign, they have to pay off that Tally.
2. The Ripple TrackInstead of making charts and things to model my characters mucking up Time, I wanted instead to use a Stress Track for it. I call it The Ripple Track since they are dealing with the Currents of Time.
Just like a regular stress track, actions that affect the Past cause damage to it. Enough damage creates Consequences.
I had this idea of "Taking one for time" where when time looks to be altered, a Character can put it back on track by taking a consequence in Time's stead or something. There has to be a way for the Characters to at least be able to try to put the Past back the way it's supposed to be.
Example: Marty McFly messes up his Timeline, causing some Consequences. Say an Extreme of
My Parents Never Met and enough for an additional Serious Consequence. Marty decides to Take one for Time by accepting a Serious Social Consequence of
My Mom is in Love With Me. He then spends the whole Movie/Adventure trying to deal enough social damage to pay off that Extreme Consequence.
That's just my first model of the Mechanic anyway.
3. The Temptation of TimeI have more than one person who could muck up time of their own free will in some way and it would be in character.
I will most likely have one PC running afoul of his younger self(The PC is really OLD), one who will probably meet his own Grandfather and I have one PC whose Trouble is literally
Instrument of Fate, Enemy of Fate AND he can see the fates of people.
I want to simulate a dangling of the carrot of "You could do something here. You could change the past."
Going back to the Back to The Future analogy, Marty McFly tells Doc Brown about the Libyans. That's Temptation.
How would I do this? I'm not sure a Compel is enough, especially since it would unfair since most of my PCs don't have many refresh left. If I were to compel them at the right time, they would be unable to buy it off. Ever.
I was thinking about a Hunger-like Track that people have when they interact with the past and have enough knowledge to estimate what would happen.
