OSSR: C°ntinuum (Silva stay out)

[virgil]

OSSR: C°ntinuum


This is being done at the heavy suggestion of Occluded Sun. As my handle is directly inspired by a talking, time-traveling, bird man, I feel uniquely qualified to give this review. Time travel is certainly a popular subject, but the nature of paradoxes is a mentally taxing subject, which is admitted even by most protagonists in fiction that uses it. There are many ways to handle time travel in your RPG, You can handle it the Dr Who way & get caffeine jitters from all the tea. You can handle it the way of Feng Shui & Chrono Trigger, where you can only travel specific distances that are temporally distant from each other.

Or you can handle it the C°ntinuum way.

The very first page is that of the four Maxims, your time-traveler pledge of alleigance, which your character is expected to memorize and be able to cite verbatim. The first maxim sets the stage for the temporal mechanics of the setting, which is built upon the foundation of self-enforced immutable time. Everything you know to happen becomes a fixed point in time that must be guarded against. The second maxim tells you to be a boot-licker with your future self when you meet them. Maxim three is your social contract stuff and reminder to keep notes. Maxim four is the rule of the Masquerade rule. Maxim five tells you to give up when it looks hopeless.

Table of Contents
This is a disturbingly short section. It's a sidebar on the credits page that takes up a third of the column, listing chapters and page numbers, and that's it. On the same page, we are informed that Denny is a Photoshop god.

O. Introductions
Fortunately, this is properly labeled. Unfortunately, it's start page and the Table of Contents don't match. There's also a column of monologuing thanks with increasing verbosity from each of authors. We are introducted to the idea that this is somehow a realistic view on human behavior; that if there's time travel, the most advanced version will be the one that disseminates among its users and the laws of time travel are just a social construct.

I. Invitations
Six and a half pages of intro story where the main character is introduced to time travel, followed by a generic outline of how spanners (slang for time-traveler) are offered to a choice between the blue and red pill. If they choose the red pill, everything fades to black with a mind-wiped training montage, waking up with the ability to teleport through space and time.

We are then thrown into character creation. How the numbers for your stats work in actual gameplay will be covered later. The three attributes of Body, Mind, and Quick are established along with descriptions of the various levels (3 is average, 7 is max human). Body is largely obvious. Mind is described to include hand-eye coordination, perception, and mental acuity; yet the examples for each rank only care about your IQ. Quick is reflexes & concentration.

Skills are described in Title & Rating. Title starts at Untrained and moves up to Grandmaster+. Rating is the title rank plus the skill's associated attribute. Therefore you can have Grandmaster and Novice have equal Rating if the lesser's Attribute is four points higher.

Next is Character Points, which is just plain poor design; much like the sample character sheet page jammed here without warning. We'll ignore it and go straight to Benefits, which are like feats. You get one for free, and can buy up to two more with character points. Like feats, there's no real sense of balance when Double-Jointed is valued the same as having both Clairvoyance and Telekinesis. There is an optional rule to take a flaw in exchange for more character points, which is even more swingy in terms of balance than Benefits, especially since you don't get to choose the Limit (2% chance for no arms, infertility, no actual limit at all, etc).

Finally, you are given an arbitrarily large bank account managed by the accountant faction of time travel society that safely and wantonly abuses their temporal powers. And by large, I mean 1d100 to the power of four; I personally just rolled an account with 12 billion bucks in it.

At last, we get to the core resolution system. This is a d10 roll-under system, with the base TN being your skill rating and natural 1s being auto-success. If you get a nat 1, you roll again to see if you get another nat 1, which turns it into a victory (critical for d20 peeps); which is MTP-level good unless it's for one of the few rolls that tells you what it will do. If die roll matches your unmodified Ability, then roll to see if you roll get that number again, which results in you owing an unknown spanner a favor as you succeed with obvious (yet hidden) assistance. While a natural 0 doesn't fail, you need to reroll to see if you get a second consecutive zero, which is a critical failure.

DCs work by assigning a Title. If your skill outranks the difficulty by two ranks or more, don't bother rolling. This includes opposed rolls between people (that bed-ridden Master gymnast will wipe the floor with nearly superhuman Novice). This creates a perverse set-up where attributes are only minimally important in the face of skills.

Like every other damn point-buy RPG, there are too many. You are only fully trained in a single specialization for each skill purchased (Novice for the rest) unless you buy it again for a different specialization. Grandmaster Rifleman? You're as good as a Texan with an SMG or pistol. So while it may *look* like there's just a rather large list of 30 skills to buy, there are actually dramatically more due to every still being like D&D's Craft/Knowledge skill. The average human is remarkably inept, and it's fortunate you get basic function skills (like your native language) for free. Skills are weirdly broad at the same time. Because you're fluent in a language for free...you inherently are able to order a beer and find the bathroom in every culture at any point in human history. This weirdly placed broadness also applies to Locality Knowledge; you know which way it is to the grocer's anywhere and anytime.


Assuming you roll you Mind score or less.

Advancement is stupid. You need to keep track of every die roll, every couple dozen successful dice rolls resulting in an advancement. You can earn successful dice rolls for advancing your skill by spending a bunch of time training (Novice to Master at Quake in about 2.5 years).

Next time...Combat

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I keep reading this title as if it was masked profanity. I'd rather hear about that game honestly.

[RobbyPants]

At last, we get to the core resolution system. This is a d10 roll-under system, with the base TN being your skill rating and natural 1s being auto-success.

Do you know what year this game was produced? Role-under, without any regard to the difficulty of the situation seems like something you'd see out of the 80s, or from the 90s when it's a crappy clone of something out of the 80s.

I keep reading this title as if it was masked profanity. I'd rather hear about that game honestly.

We'll still call the protagonists "spanners", which takes on a slightly different meaning. But yes, that game sounds awesome.

[virgil]

At last, we get to the core resolution system. This is a d10 roll-under system, with the base TN being your skill rating and natural 1s being auto-success.

Do you know what year this game was produced? Role-under, without any regard to the difficulty of the situation seems like something you'd see out of the 80s, or from the 90s when it's a crappy clone of something out of the 80s.

This game was published in 1999, but most certainly uses the same mindset that created THAC0. You add the difference between your skill rank and difficulty rank from your skill rating...which makes it as intuitive as time travel, I guess. For example, your Novice 6 spanner wants to attempt a Journeyman rank task; which means their skill rating counts as a 4 for the task. A Master 6 spanner's rating would count as a 7; and a Grandmaster of any rating doesn't even have to roll.

[Occluded Sun]

Thank you for doing this, virgil.

My searches targeting this game reveal a common theme in the results: even the people who love this game dislike the skill system. I think you've done a good job showing how the mechanics are... less then optimal.

I'm waiting with bated breath for your examination of time travel society, which I admit is the aspect of the game I'm most interested in.

[virgil]

I. Invitations; fighting in a level playing field



Initiative is static and works in weird IP arrangement. Each round is split into five initiative passes, in which you get (Quick/5) per round evenly distributed. Multiple actors in one IP go in order of highest to lowest Quick, ties are broken with a die roll. You are given 5 seconds to decide what to do, which is weirdly strict for a game that will undoubtedly be bogged down by tracking your timeline. I can't help but notice that the average person moves like 12' every 10 seconds if they sprint for the round; 30' if you change the rules for Athletics.

Combat is, like many other things, completely not intuitive, and the example combat is written terribly. It's also surprisingly RLT. Through charts and arithmatic, the single die roll for your attack determines both whether you hit and how much damage you deal; which will likely take you out because about half the time, you go into shock. This mix of title and skill rating creates an interesting dynamic that differentiates between ranged and melee; ranged combat is against a 'static' DC, which means you mostly ignore the skill of your target for your target's results. Melee combat is based on opposed rolls, which means if one person is 2+ ranks higher than the other, then it is literally impossible for them to lose in a fight until they take damage from elsewhere.

Next time, we cover Chapter II, Spanning. Or as I like to call it, How to be Mr Magoo Across Time & Space.

[virgil]

II. Spanning
While leaps better than WoD's fiction pieces of using indecipherable fonts, I don't fully understand why they feel the need to have the text entirely in italic AND written in coloured-in sidebars. We get it, it's not game text.

We're given a summary of common terms and definitions at least a dozen pages after they've been used repeatedly, as well as a piece on verb tenses, going for the refreshingly simple approach of using Plain English with the context that the people in the conversation are time travelers.


How time travel grammar is usually handled

Time travel is quite simple. A beginning spanner can jump to any point within a 1 mile, and can displace a total of up to 1 year per day. They never materialize into solid matter, the worst risk is facing the wall when materialization, barring jumps into outer space or inside a reactor. DO NOT temporally displace more than your daily allotment, or you will go insane, in shock, or in orbit (do not pass Go, go directly to dead). If you're painfully lucky, you end up exhausted and without powers for ten days.

Next, human history is weirdly split up into a dozen 'eras' labeled by the Zodiac. I see no reason why the Zodiac's used other than showing off their goth cred. The real message is we know what territories have been claimed by the three major temporal empires; Inheritors control the vast majority of the post-2000 AD future, the Antedesertium essentially controls pre-12000 BC, and PCs are part of the Societies that 'control' the in-between.

Gemini Incidents are an annoyance, as portrayed in this game. You are required to cross paths with yourself 0-10 times at each level of time travel power, the time and behavior of your meeting your future self is decided and played by the DM. Don't forget Maxim 2 and grovel before your elder. This then becomes a Fixed Point, and you add it to your To-Do List. You technically get to be the elder later on to close the time loop, you don't get any actual free will in the scene and must act out the script given to you the first go-around. At least a faint idea of sense is given by forbidding the DM from making the elder die in front of the PC or cause a paradox.

A casual mention is made about learning of your time of death, followed by a citation for later in the book (hell of a cliffhanger there). You are allowed to 'survive' being killed once by teleporting away just before you're splattered, adding death on your To-Do List, and put it off for two 'levels' before you come back to the moment you left.


WHY CAN'T YOU DO THIS INSTEAD?!

If you die before you're supposed to after doing this, your corpse frags into oblivion and anyone directly involved gets a point of frag. I'm not sure why this doesn't cause frag with all of the spanners whose futures you've already interacted with or been told about. There's also no explanation for how the bystanders get rid of this kind of frag, implying they're screwed for the rest of their life (unable to slipshank, advance in levels, etc). This is a frankly annoying bit of inconsistency with how temporal society/mechanics works in this game, especially considering the notekeeping they expect of the people involved.

We now have a glossary/dictionary & an in-character story.

At last, we're at the section of how the player is supposed to behave.
You accumulate knowledge of future events in your life, which is called your Yet, that's added to your To-Do List; failure earns you paradox/Frag, and one of the Maxims is to abandon people who have 5+ Frag points. At arbitrary points in your personal timeline, you will gain a point of Frag, signaling that there's a paradox about to happen in your timeline that needs to be resolved. If you screw up, your social network of time travelers will handle it, up to and including the actions of Better-Than-You NPCs. This is as dis-empowering as it sounds.

While you play, because the temporal mechanics are built on a foundation of self-enforced immutable time, you are going to be keeping notes. A lot of notes. How much time you've spent in any one area, what you did, what you experienced, where you traveled, when you traveled, how far you've traveled in space-time before resting, what you're going to do, when you're going to do it. Because at any point there's a contradiction, you get a point of Frag to resolve. This note-taking is ultimately the biggest failing point of the game. I've heard that the administrative burden makes Ars Magica look like Risus.


You will be quizzed later

Mundanes are implicitly immune to these concerns unless the spanner notices a contradiction by knowing their state in their future. This Schrodinger's causality creates a real disincentive for time travelers to pay close attention to the timeline, because the more they observe/interact, the more potential points of paradox. Hence my assessment that Mr Magoo is an ideal time traveler, with Eidetic Memory to make sure your DM doesn't get you with a forgotten fact.

Your coterie troupe corner gets their bit of space-time to call their own, where you keep things in order, deal with your mundane relations, and get enlisted by Elminster (ie, level 4 spanners) for major events.

An As/As Not is a point of time where a paradox threatens to unravel the universe. This is where your personal contribution is put in perspective. "The Continuum, with its uncounted vigitillions of spanners Up into the future depending on that event, always win in the end."

The philosophy behind counter-frag is explored here, with surprisingly little in the way of examples. If an enemy Narcissist attempts to kill your grandfather, how the hell do you know when and where they're doing it? You just get a point of Frag and are told to solve the mystery.

Advancing to the next level of time travel ability (Span 2), which increases your span range by an order of magnitude, requires various conditions and two months of player time. Better than the XP system for skill advancement, I'll give it that. Reaching Span 2 now permits you to actually partake in greater time travel society rather than just your tiny corner.

Tune in next time for...BloodlineFraternities!

[RobbyPants]

So, what's the point of the second maxim? Is it just to make sure that you don't upset the DM while he's busy stealing some of your agency?

[Occluded Sun]

Thematically it's the entire point of the game: don't try to screw with causality by trying to change the future. Your 'Elders' literally *are* your future.

Unless they're Thespian stand-ins or Narcissist duplicates, of course.

[virgil]

So, what's the point of the second maxim? Is it just to make sure that you don't upset the DM while he's busy stealing some of your agency?

In theory, it's acknowledging the fact that you're less informed with how the scene plays out and can create a paradox by accident, so a strong rule of behavior is necessary to limit this issue. In practice, exactly that.

[Smirnoffico]

This note-taking is ultimately the biggest failing point of the game. I've heard that the administrative burden makes Ars Magica look like Risus.

It's so bad, I'm pretty sure every game of Continuum ends when players release all they've been doing for a last couple of sessions is go through the notes again and again to figure if they created a paradox somewhere

[virgil]

II. Spanning; Span 2 & Fraternities

Once you've gone ding and your friends have gone 'grats!', you get yourself a bachelor pad separate from your old corner to get some privacy, informally add "fake own death" to your bucket list (or To-Do List depending), get a passport, join a club, etc. The club part is important, as they're essentially time travel trade guilds, as well as the White Wolf equivalent to clans and bloodlines.

[*]Antiquarians Props department and Indiana Jones hiring agency.
[*]Dreamers Specialists of the Dreaming skill, acting as both temporal telegram service and DM info-dump, with a New Age aesthetic.
[*]Engineers Repairmen & IT department.
[*]Foxhorn British game hunters that essentially act as the temporal armed forces.
[*]Midwives Matchmakers and relationship specialists. A morally dark faction by reminding the reader that they ensure fated relationships don't change, which includes keeping abusive relationships going. Also the Fraternity that made all Spanners legally forbidden from making babies with other Spanners.
[*]Moneychangers Bankers who handle all of the stock exchange manipulations that amateur time-travelers shouldn't be engaging in.
[*]Physicians Doctors and CDC.
[*]Quicker Time coroners. They scrounge up pieces of people who have been fragged into oblivion and take them into Cold Storage.
[*]Scribes Historians & script supervisors.
[*]Thespians Understudies for historical figures who have gotten killed before they're supposed to. It's almost implied that Hitler doesn't actually exist, and is just a series of spanners filling his role because he's become such a fixed point in time.

II. Spanning; Span 3

After the campaign's gone for three months and the entrance exam is passed, which includes getting your physical & life-extension done in the 22nd century, you get to be able to span 100 years and 100 miles each day. You get told what happened during that blacked out training montage that gave you your time travel powers. You also get the Book of To-Do for your newly assigned corner which explicitly makes NPC Span 3s functionally omniscient; something to keep in mind when you start out the game and have a Span 3 following you around.



You now get to turn this around and be the omniscient spanner that trains the new time travelers, though you are unlikely to have as much free will as the DM did with their Span 3 because you'll be given a script and a pager from two Elminsters. You're also given a bunch of heavy reminders of the Five Maxims that you'll be drilling into the newbies.

II. Spanning; Span 4

Four months later, you get to the rank of Span 4. Now you can span a thousand years in a single day, and are given functionally unlimited life-extension treatments. They're also reminded that disrupting the history ofnations & towns is like messing with someone's grandfather; and that Span 4s get to use them as the playing board for "The Greatest Game" (quotation marks and everything); the purpose to make their home nation/culture reach as far through time without paradox.

Two things about this game, which is distinctly played only by Span 4s. First is that I'm simply dumbfounded that they didn't go with a chess motif here. Second is that history books kind of stack the deck; if you were born and raised in the Warm Springs Reservation, you are part of a cultural identity that didn't fully exist until 1938 & nobody is going to think it will be all that significant by 2220 AD. Meanwhile, the Chinese spanner is going to fvcking win. The basic rules of the game is that you do enough research/pedantry/sabotage to 'claim' mundanes as part of your Society (genealogy is the easiest). Once you've got enough points in the span (pun intended) of time allotted once you start, you win the Game.


One can only hope this happens

Instead of playing the Game, you can be one of the people in charge of a Fraternity for a couple centuries, do spywork against the other major Time Power, or be a Span 5's gofer.

II. Spanning; Span 5

You have now been playing this game for more than a year (14 months absolute minimum), and now are permitted to reach Span 5 and become one of the Exalted. Quite a bit of text is dedicated to describing how big and powerful Exalted are, how they can readily replace entire corners with identical copies, and how normal human history and its time travelers is more like a nursery to them.


Putting spanners in Time Out

Aside from a very broad "protect the Continuum" job, Exalted war on the Antedesertium (the other primary time traveler society deep in pre-desert Sahara). Inheritors remain Better-Than-You and are casually revealed to be Roswell greys.

Each additional level of Span requires five months of real time, approval from higher level spanners, and are personally approached by an Inheritor past Span 7.

[codeGlaze]

[*]Thespians Understudies for historical figures who have gotten killed before they're supposed to. It's almost implied that Hitler doesn't actually exist, and is just a series of spanners filling his role because he's become such a fixed point in time.

That's actually kind of cool / amusing.

[virgil]

III. Struggling, Communication

A major facet of Dreamspeak is revealed here, which the Dreamers fraternity has a corner on due to specialization; dreams don't cause paradox. The excuse for why does end up making them very subject to DM-fiat in terms of how important/true/valid the information you get from dreams is. Scenes in other peoples' dreams are generally controlled by the higher ranked skill, but dreamers can control their own body's manifestation unless severely outranked. Dream combat works like normal combat, but with no consequence other than waking up, unless Telepathy is used as a sneak attack (once the victim knows its 'real', they can choose to wake up).

Scribes keep good records, maintain a postal service for time travelers, and evidently keep note of every Time Combat for spanners to reference.

Languages are given a fair bit of detail on how you're going to screw up even within the last decade. The closest thing to a fix offered, other than relentless research and pedantry, is to require the player to begin every statement with "Tell him..." like you're playing Jeopardy (so just the pedantry). Not even Telepathy helps, as it just gives memories rather than the meaning behind them. There is the potential option for a babelfish, which is in the DM section.

III. Struggling, Aquarian Skills

We've got time travel, might as well throw in psychic powers of all sorts. Even the mundanes get them, though they don't get auto-success the way spanners do, and Inheritors are still better than you.

Clairvoyance acts as wakeful Dreaming. Hypnotism makes you Merritt McKinney from Now You See Me. Telepathy can target anyone within teleport range and read/shield/wipe/suppress emotions and memories, and go Freddy if you also have Dreaming. Pyrokinesis is the kill button. Levitation eventually lets you fly at faster than crappy elevator speeds; while TK lets you target someone other than yourself, but under severe weight restrictions. The attribute requirements are extreme for beginners, and except for Hypnotism & Clairvoyance, it's impossible to be higher than a Novice. Long story short, psychic powers require some rather intense specialization; and we don't currently have an established method to get higher than Mind 7 (and thus higher than Novice). This is likely where a lot of the "I win" comes from higher ups, considering how potent these powers are.

III. Struggling; Time Combat

Time Combat is only really applicable to other spanners, which means only Narcissists are the only real opponent; and they're outnumbered and outgunned. They even call the Continuum (the faction the PCs are part of) "the Swarm" to show how doomed they are in a fight. Not that it's impossible for them to succeed at hurting you and escaping, but sufficient submissions to higher positions in the spanner network will eventually get all of the consequences undone. Not even Narcissists try to directly mess with Time Combats after they've been resolved, and neither should players. Because that will summon 1d10*1d10 spanners PER ROUND to stamp your face in for trying. Actual Time Combat is a series of specific moves called Stratagems, and inventing new ones is a detailed process of approval between game sessions. The design approach is actually quite clever. Amusingly, one of the established 'stratagems' includes straight up clocking them (pun intended).


"Dude! That was Carl from the Thespians.

The complexity is thicker than fog in a noir detective novel, and needs way better technical writing. For reasons solely of game balance, you can spend several months between rounds and not regain any Span. The various stratagems are interesting and look wonky at the surface since rounds don't have a time limit, especially since a RL time limit is placed on planning one's actions. One stratagem is just saying you'll clean up after the Time Combat, another can involve sleeping for a month. Strength of numbers is everything, just through the use of Isolate alone (saints above, I love these puns!). Another flaw is that I can't see anything stopping a Narcissist from getting all sorts of Oracle & Frume & Cobweb activity before smacking an unsuspecting PC with two Hit & Runs before they can do a thing. Despite a bunch of discrete rules and guidelines, fragging attempts are resolved w/a single die roll where 40% of the results are explicitly DM fiat.


My first use of this meme, ever.


III. Struggling; Narcissists & Lesser Dangers

This seriously reads like a propaganda piece for handling Narcissists, which makes the piece kind of awkward to read. Narcissists are revealed to be agents of an enemy state that also has time travel capability, who send terrorist cells into our recent (last 8000 years recent) past, claiming to have a different knowledge of how time travel actually works. As they are depicted as cartoonishly misguided yet still able to control millennium of Earth with temporal capabilities that are outright unavailable to players, there's obviously something not being said here. The reminder that spanners can break any taboo they want (which mundanes are woefully incapable of preventing), so long as it doesn't create a paradox, certainly doesn't engender a healthy looking society.

Rather than dealing with the whole sanity point math as seen in Call of Cthulhu, we go straight to a list of mental illnesses taken from your Psych 101 textbook and the suggestion that your player should get one if something traumatic happens (examples include Frag 4+, losing your legs, and having your lover be brutally murdered in front of you). On a strangely related note, do not drink and span, because it will mess you up.

IV. Mastering

At this point we're given hints of the kinds of adventures/hooks that players are subject to. Anal retention of notes, spontaneous revelations of paradox they caused that they now have to fix, etc. We're are told of the dreaded munchkin, and are advised to handle them by ignoring their accomplishments, w/NPCs heaping praise toward better behaved players. If you don't approve of an attention hog, let them spend six months training a skill and have the character fat, acne-ridden, and balding; or even slap them with 3 frag and then start Time Combat by unknown Narcissists. In passing, we're told that bored players are the DM's fault. We're also given rather standard campaign advise and a reminder that this is a game where PCs start able to perfectly teleport and travel through time, with continuity porn being their only limit.

We're given a semi-random run-down of various elements of time travel, including a reminder the fake corpse idea I suggested isn't allowed "just because." We're also given a rundown of important skills and secrets for each of the Fraternities; the secrets are predominantly tech access, but some are legit secrets. The upper-tier Dreamers suspect dreams are another universe, and dances around the implication of how this is similar to Narcissist philosophy. Foxhorns have piles of Narcissist moles. Midwives understand that half-spanner children produce psychics. Quickers are extremely bigoted against spanners who were born before the 21st century.

Next is the technobabble behind time travel. The ability is tied to the heart, brain, & spine; and DMs are encouraged to set spanners on fire if they try to time travel when any of these are damaged. You also accumulate 'natural' frag when exposed to radiation, including being within a week of a nuke's blast (in either temporal direction); and evidently all time travelers need to hop past axial shifts or die. Spanners turn into time travelling tachyons that make up the energy of the Van Allen Belts, & are fueled by solar radiation. Spanners, upon reaching Span 3, are informed of several random To-Dos that were technically revealed to them back when they were first made into spanners; which can be stuff like "you will become Exalted, no exceptions" to "people like you" to "you will be raped to death."

More detail is given on various aspects of spanner culture, a couple NPCs, etc. We're also given a nice, thorough explanation that Inheritors are Better-Than-You grays with full-on flying saucers w/paradox engines. The Men in Black flail uselessly against the machinations of novice time travelers. More detailed powers available to Narcissists (and desperate PCs) at 6+ Frag, losing the ability to act or even exist.

Rather than full adventures, we're treated to a pair of scenarios for each rank of Span the party can reach. The hook, the major concerns, and the 'surprise'. These are the first true hint of what adventures are expected to look like for a campaign. Span 1s investigate a time travelling serial murder accomplice & torture hedge fund managers. Span 2s get roped into three-way Narcissist Time Combats and thwart creepy stalker experiments. Span 3s stop under-cover medieval French court assassinations, weather a Narcissist gun fight that gets deus-ex machina'd by their own leader, and get involved in an Exalted Time Combat over a case of beer. Span 4s deliver an airplane to an 18th century BC Chinese warlord that's holding their friends ransom and deal with time-traveling paint that's messing with multiple corners.

[virgil]

V: Knowing; History as Battlefield

Next comes various ancient species in Earth's history. The oldest are jewelry loving iguanadons, then came temporally powerful hominids. Both of these races are too far back to realistically ever visit; even the Exalted need to travel for a subjective year to reach them one-way. A Dreamer nation is founded and protected about 45,000 years in the past in Australia. About 23,000 BC is a culture of people controlled by the Midwives where spanners breed amongst themselves (without causing a temporal apocalypse like the rest of text says would happen) into extinction.

Then comes the Antedesertium eras, with its Narcissist kingdoms and handful of fixed points of time in what is otherwise a quagmire of misinformation. Of particular note is the Scorpiod Era (16-14000BC), which was lightly discussed earlier as a violent piece of spacetime ruled by powerful Narcissist kings who send minions to the modern eras. This time period is riddled with enough radiation to make spanning here a bad idea, and is ruled by seven entities that can only be described as demonic temporal gods statted to be Better-Than-You; and have 16 lieutenants who are just plain highly powerful, and all of them wield magic items made out of fragged time travelers.Technically the Leonid Era is theirs as well, but it's more of a war-torn wasteland from all of the fighting. There does exist Atlantis, a high-tech city of spanners from the Continuum, where people live and the Council makes its decisions for the laws of spanner civilization.

We are also given a summary of the next century or two, which isn't terribly noteworthy. The section on 'real life' time travel is particularly useless, and you'd do better messing with modern science articles and a scroll through Wikipedia these days.

VI: Details

Appendix A I wouldn't really call these "fallacies", but "misconceptions." It's just a list of various time travel tropes that don't apply to this game, without citing the obvious source for reasons I don't understand. We're basically told that it's not Back to the Future, Doctor Who, Time Cop, The Time Traveler's Wife, etc.

Appendix B explains what an RPG is (bit late), and C is a series of tables to calculate what day of the week it is for whatever historical date you're traveling to. I have no idea where D through H is, because we go straight to G and its explanation on the more specific rules of the Greatest Game.

Final Thoughts[/size]

This game is a true Heartbreaker. It's not based on any established system, but it's got a cool hook (you are a time traveler!), and the Time Combat rules are actually good concepts.

The skill system is fairly bad. There are way too many, and the DCs are barely extant. Because of the dice mechanics, it's an uphill battle to know your chances of success, which makes the DM's work even harder. It manages to do better than a number of other systems at the social minigame by simply not having a diplomacy skill. The closest to a social minigame is Etiquette & Swindle, neither of which claim to be able to convince people to behave in a certain way. To top it off, there is not a single way in the game to raise your Body or Mind to 8+, which forbids access to the useful levels of the psychic skills and makes the statted entities unreachably Better-Than-You. Technically, DM Fiat exists for house-ruled tech to improve a PC's Body/Mind to higher levels, but that's not valid for review.

Combat is brutal, deterministic, poorly explained, and has too many charts to check off on during the process.

The absolute biggest flaws are gameplay and setting. Ars Magica attracts the kind of person who likes Logistics & Dragons, which most certainly exists (like me). But, I have yet to meet a single person who would like the idea of Continuity & Dragons; and this is coming from a regular on a forum that loves the idea of verisimilitude and self-consistency in their campaign setting. The inherent nature of time travel and the design of the rules encourage an ever-growing body of events each session that need to be cross-referenced at a moments' notice to ensure there's no contradiction, which is just plain boring. At least when people do this for Doctor Who or Star Trek, there's a fun story associated with it that you can regale your friends with. I can't necessarily advocate a good story out of this setting. Besides your own attention to detail, the only antagonists in this game are Narcissists, who are just political enemies with the same limits and powers as the players. Narcissists aren't even that well-developed, their plots either a selfish misunderstanding of time travel mechanics or trying to take out moose and squirrel.


This is probably about as deep as their characterization gets too

We're given hints that the temporal wars of the Antedesertium eras can be more impressive, as it is essentially flying saucers vs evangelion angels. But the numbers involved preclude the players from being more than railroaded set pieces.

[Username17]

I can't really see anything that I'd want to swipe from this game other than "We should play a time travel game." The core mechanics are a mess, the backstory is full of shit no one cares about and sorely lacking in things that matter to the players. The temporal mechanics are almost he most labor intensive I could imagine and the end result is something that is simultaneously disempowering and uninteresting.

If we're going to be doing an RPG, why aren't we doing Cronotrigger/Feng Shui or Doctor Who? Those set ups are actually playable and have levers that player characters can interact with.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Good review, although I'd never heard of the game before.

The "create a vast trail of paperwork that will eventually crush you out of existence" is a particularly weird thing to include. I can't imagine any of our regular players getting excited by that prospect.

When people talk about a Kafka-esque paperwork nightmare they are usually referencing being on the receiving end of it, not having to generate it aswell!

[Chamomile]

What actually is the Doctor Who time travel setup, exactly?

[angelfromanotherpin]

The classic Doctor Who setup is you pull the 'make booth go' lever, arrive somewhere/when more-or-less at random because your time machine is only working in the most generous sense, and then pretend it was intentional so you don't look bad in front of the Earthlings. Then wherever you are, there's a problem caused by aliens, and you solve it. Actual time travel mostly isn't used inside the adventure, it's just the bridge between adventures.

[Longes]

You forgot to mention the most important element - commiting genocide on space nazis and all other undesirables.

[virgil]

I can't really see anything that I'd want to swipe from this game other than "We should play a time travel game."

The non-fragging stratagems of Time Combat are actually kind of interesting, as they actually abstract the whole mess that is time travel. I can see justification converting them into a proper RPG.

What actually is the Doctor Who time travel setup, exactly?

Angelfromanotherpin actually describes the general episode of the plot. The temporal mechanics, more specifically, treat each time and place as its own 'country' you can visit. You rarely do Bill & Ted shenanigans or otherwise change the timeline in a meaningful way. Time travelers implicitly do not interact with their personal timeline, and by association, do not meet other travelers out of order; exceptions like River Song are notable for being exceptions.

[GreatGreyShrike]

There's a pretty decent description of Doctor Who timetravel over on qntm.org. It's really, really good for single author fiction, or sequential single author fiction, but as soon as you get multiple people all wanting to have different goals happen I feel like the thing would collapse and not be terribly suitable / useful. Perhaps if the DM played the infallible, ineffable, lying Doctor and PCs played others, or something? I don't even know how it'd be used in a game, to be quite honest.

[Occluded Sun]

Great review, virgil. I think you successfully represented both the game's strong and (numerous) weak points.

Having located a copy of the game (which it seems is no longer being sold, but a scan does exist) I can see why the tvtropes article had so many interesting tropes listed, but also why the game is virtually unknown. Sort of a shame.

Regarding Dr. Who: the overwhelming majority of seasons, episodes, and specials don't really play up the weirder aspects of time and space travel. It's only in the most recent seasons of New Who that causality weirdness has really occurred.

[virgil]

Time Combat I have said the system here is decent, but I've not given very much information. I feel I should show the basics of the system.
Glossary

• As/As Not - The first Frag attempt that initiates Time Combat
• Sweep - A round in Time Combat
• Frag - Unresolved paradox, 7 or more means you're dead
• Stratagem - Action/maneuver for a single Sweep
• Span - Ability to displace through time
• Span Limit - Cumulative displacement without rest (1 year at Span 1, 10yr at Span 2, 100yr at Span 3, etc).
• Span Recovery - Requires one day of subjective time without using Span, fully restoring Span Limit. Cannot occur during Time Combat, regardless of subjective time spent.
• Duration - Subjective time spent continuously in a single 'place', starting at the point of entry.
• Frag Attack - Deal X Frag on target by creating a paradox in their timeline (knocking over a lamp, hiding the car keys before they leave, etc), required to secretly declare Stratagem used for the upcoming Sweep immediately after the Frag Attack is resolved
• Initiative & Declaration - Declare Stratagems from Earliest to Latest (lowest Quick to highest Quick). Resolve Stratagems from earliest to latest, highest quick to lowest.

Time Combat starts at the first point of Frag. While the target can opt to not defend themselves and heal the Frag later, they will be unable to catch the assailant in the act because of the broad rule against interfering with already resolved Time Combats.

Stratagems
Gemini Flush

• Duration 10min
  Effects Gives user 1 Frag by summoning a future self. Used for Physical Combat, and one additional future self may be summoned per round (at 1 Frag per copy). Any Frag from Gemini Flush is healed once Time Combat is resolved.

Harbinger

• Duration 1 second
  Effects If a successful attack (Frag or physical) has been made, evidence can be shown to an enemy combatant (not just the target), inflicting upon them a -1 to all Skills for the combat from the demoralization. This can be done multiple times if there are multiple succesful attacks, the penalties stacking.

Hit & Run

• Duration 1 min
  Effects Target a specific event, person, or object in a foe's timeline for a Frag Attack and then move on. As normal, you must secretely declare your action for the next Sweep.

Patch

• Duration 1 sec
  Effects Once aware of the source of Frag, you resolve to solve the Frag after the Time Combat has ended; where you must travel to any point within 15s to 30min after the Frag Attack took place.

Hide

• Duration 7 to 128 days
  Effects Run and stay in a temporal safehouse (local Corner, for instance). Oracle attempts on this area can only find this location on a Victory (two natural 10s). Frune results are halved. Frag Attacks are at a +1 penalty.

Isolate

• Duration 1 second
  Effects Requires three cooperating spanners that have Rendezvous with each other the prior Sweep. Each spanner makes an opposed Quick test vs the target, resolved from highest Quick to lowest. Each success gives the target a cumulative -1 Quick penalty for the Sweep and adds a point of Frag to the target while they're performing their Stratagem. Losing the test results in the assailant taking a point of Frag. If the target is still standing, they cannot perform a Stratagem next Sweep and are Disoriented for 7 days.
  The actors in an Isolate must Rendezvous for their next Sweep, one minute Up from their prior one. A successful Isolate targeted within 15 seconds of the As/As Not will heal the Frag of it and any Frag taken during Isolate itself (except for the target's).

Cobweb

• Duration 7 days + 14 days per +1 bonus (max +6/84 days)
  Effects Plant false information (on a successful Skill check) to fool attempts at Oracle or Measure. Subtract Mind score of the Cobwebber from the skill used in Oracle. If Oracle is successful anyway, the falsehood is revealed for what it is. While Measure automatically sees through the Cobweb, they will be distracted long enough to be targetable for Physical Combat. Dreaming is unaffected by Cobweb unless the Cobwebber also has Dreaming, in which case subtract Dreaming instead of Mind from the diviner.

Frune

• Duration 7 days + 14 days per +1 bonus (max +6/84 days)
  Effects Make a Span check to get the answer to a single question from your known spanner contacts. You will be socially pressured by your contacts to resolve any unfixed Frag after the Time Combat.

Iron Man

• Duration 7 days
  Effects Go Up enough into the objective future to discover the fate of this Time Combat; roll a 1d10
  • 1: Victorious. Gain +5 to all Skills/Abilities in this Time Combat. Spanner will take minimal damage and no extra Frag.
    2-5: Favorable Signs. Gain +3 to Skills/Abilities in this Time Combat.
    6-9: Unfavorable Signs. Gain -2 to Skills/Abilities in this Time Combat.
    10: Death. You will die in this Time Combat; add to your Yet.
  If you have Fruned in a previous Sweep for this Time Combat, you may reroll the result of Iron Man. You can perform Iron Man no more than once per Time Combat.

Measure

• Duration 1 day + 14 days per +2 bonus (max +6/42dy)
  Effects Roll Mind, adjusted for Duration. You are personally spying upon a locality for the Duration, and may grant a +2 (adjusted for duration) bonus to another spanner by informing them of the results. You cannot gain this bonus personally, except for the Mind roll to resolve the Stratagem itself, because you are too involved in events to safely interfere.

Oracle

• Duration 7 days + 12 days per +1 bonus (max +5/60dy)
  Effects Use an appropirate skill to research events in the Past (History, Library, Archaeology, etc), with a bonus based on Duration. The amount of time the target spent in the Past that's relevant to the question is added to the Oracle's Duration for purposes of their bonus to this test. The order of events are as follows
  • 1. Declare Target.
    2. Declare duration of study for Oracle.
    3. Ask a single question
    • Who or what caused this Frag?
      Where & when is the As/As Not?
      Where & when did they go?
      How, when, & where was I Fragged?
    4. Roll Skill, gain +1 if moved Up, +2 if you're the the farthest in the future in this Time Combat.

Rendezvous

• Duration 1 day
  Effects Share information with all friendly parties in the Rendezvous, and are given 3 minutes to discuss the Next Sweep. The meeting point is presumed to have been discussed previously.

Rendezvous la Reve

• Duration 2 hours
  Effects Like Rendezvous, but uses Dreaming to save on objective time

Reverse Engineer

• Duration 1 minute
  Effects Must know of the target and have Oracled an event in the target's Yet. You perform a Frag Attack on the event in their Yet. Messing with a Gemini Incident is dangerous, as you're involving both younger and elder separately in the Time Combat.

Statue of Liberty

• Duration 1 minute
  Effects Must have a point of Frag from this Time Combat. You make the target late for their first point of Frag in the Time Combat, which heals your own point. This leaves the victim fragged for not knowing they were fragged. As this is the second point of Frag dealt, the assailant gets to leave Time Combat.

Surrender

• Duration 1 minute
  Effects If Oracle or Frune was performed last Sweep, you may appear before a spanner in supplication.

What Ends Time Combat?
[*] Two failed Oracle/Frune attempts
[*] Two attempts to Frag by the same spanner against the same target succeed.
[*] Both parties agree to stop
[*] One side is taken out physically
[*] One side hits Frag 7+

Frag Attack
Roll a 1d10. Shift the results by 1 per Span level difference with the defender.

• 1: Deal 1 Frag to target
  2 - 5: DM Fiat
  6 - 8: Deal no Frag
  9 - 10: Suffer 1 Frag