Living is...Weird™."

>>48415876
You can give it harsh restrictions by means of some transdimensional policing organization or simple laws of the universe.

Or some setting-specific counter, as with anything else. It's fairly easy to balance if you look at it like a speed modifier, or there is only a limited amount of time for the caster to act in while time is stopped.

>>48415876
I liked the way Life is Strange did the whole Tell Tale your responses in conversations will affect the outcome of the game but you can view the direct response, then go back and choose another option. Until I discovered that at certain key moments (the parts where you would probably most what to try out several different decisions) the game takes away your rewind powers for no reason. Plus I would have probably enjoyed it more if Max was more cynical of all the hipster bullshit in the game.

>In a PnP RPG?
Unless used as a one time "get out of shit free card" or as an overall plot device then I personally don't think it's doable.
Time magic would drastically reduce the weight behind player decisions and their consequences as you could always redo them.
In combat being able to say re-roll a die, shift your initiative or even redo a turn would be interesting but I'm not sure how much you could do with it.

>In a board game?
I've still not seen anything that has actually done true "time travel" really. There's obviously Time Stories and Tragedy Looper but their more like the Lone Wolf books with replays.

>In video games?
I think Life is Strange is a good example of how to do time control here. Taking a sort of standard game yet allowing the player to go back and try another option (or perhaps moving forward to see the ultimate results of those choices).

>>48415876
>infinite reset buttons
>y/n

No.

>>48415876
I could see time travel be used in a tabletop game, but it would require a very skilled GM who is more or less constantly on top of everything, as well as a very good and thoughtful party. Insanely difficult, but not impossible.

>>48415876
It is to accelerate / decelerate something in time.
The greater the acceleration / deceleration, the more taxing it is, logarithmically.
You can never have completely instantaneous action or full time stop.

Alternatively: have the timefuckery unrestricted and make sure the system / setting has some other crazy powers. When everything is OP, nothing is.

>>48415876
I've seen an interesting mechanic which worked well, thogh it was a tad stiff, in C°ntinuum, an old table RPG about a society of time travelers devoted to defending the integrity of the universe by reparing paradox created by ill-advised travelers or time-anarchists.

>>48415876
What're your ideas? How have you tried implementing it? Who do you think does it best?
Tell us your fucking story, OP. You're a GM and not just some bored shitposter asking hypothetical questions that have nothing to do with your hobbies, right?

>>48415876
Yes, see.
Fate points
Hast spell and all Hast/Slow/Time Stop type spells.

>>48416743
how did it work?

>>48415876
Nope.

>>48415876
For plot? Yes.
But as a player ability? Are fucking retarded? Of fucking coarse it's OP. You dumb cunt.
Go bait /B/.

>>48416804
Well, you see, it considered that everything you do was actually meant to be all along... Except for the things you know didn't happen.

For example, if you travel back in time and bump into a random guy you don't know, which leads to him being killed, well, it was always like that and actually you've changed nothing important.

BUT if you travel back in time and end up waking up your old self, which leads him to see you, you have to do a lot of manipulation (in this example, go further back in time, put sleeping pills in your old self's food, hide him in the closet, steal his clothes and get in the bed so, when your other self gets in the room, you can fake being your old self seing him, but the singularity is repaired)

It's complicated as hell but it allows for a lot of fun.

>>48415876
It's very easy to run usable Time Magic. What you have to do is model the results, not the process. Your PC is always the "last link in the chain".

For example, let's say you want the power to go back in time and leave yourself a useful item.

What you /get/ is the power to create any item you want, which is handed over from nowhere by your future self.

Then later you have to return to that spot with the item and send it back through time, closing the loop.

The longer you leave it, the more your Paradox Meter fills up, until you get eaten by clockroaches or swallowed by the time vortex or attract the attention of the continuum police or whatever.

>>48415876
No, any actual time magic which is placed in the hands of players (which I'm guessing is what you mean by thinking it could be op) and not just magic fluffed as involving time would be a nightmare to handle.

As a plot device and something the gm can predict? Yeah totally. The big thing is book keeping. If you can only go back a few seconds that's all well and good. But what if you get into a fight with like 8 people? The gm and all players now have to keep a written record of every combat round, because even if you just altered a few seconds a ton of stuff could have just happened.

It'd be less mentally taxing in conversations though, but even in that case you'd still have to remember and more importantly be able to recall and wing shit far too much. It'd just be a bitch to actually keep the game cohesive. Not to mention time plots already can make that tricky hence why so many simplify the effects of changing something.

I've used plot point time magic before though. Worked out well enough, players got caught in a time bubble and had to break out of a little groundhog day scenario without the result being aging into dust. Ended up being a year or two older for their troubles.

>>48415876
Well, going back in time is almost always abusable. "Slowing down time for the enemy" as in "they're slower and get disadvantages on everything relying on reaction times" can be perfectly balanced, but the same result could be achieved without time magic I guess.

>>48415876

Just treat it like WIsh: the player might get what he wishesm, but every time some terrible side-effect happens to the timeline.

File: 1404594292460.png (627KB, 2148x1276px) Image search: [Google]

627KB, 2148x1276px

>>48415876
>time powers
>balanced
Pick one.

>>48416154
>I liked the way Life is Strange did the whole Tell Tale your responses in conversations will affect the outcome of the game but you can view the direct response, then go back and choose another option. Until I discovered that at certain key moments (the parts where you would probably most what to try out several different decisions) the game takes away your rewind powers for no reason.

I liked it until the end.

I mean, I get that there is a big theme going on and it's not about saving Chloe, but about Max getting the chance to reconnect with her, but when the primary mechanic of your game is the ability to change the outcome of stuff, having the final choice completely isolated from and unaffected by everything else you've done is some serious ME3 tier bullshit.

I feel like they must have run out of money or some shit.

>>48418065
It can be I think.

>>48418105
I thought it made perfect sense.

It was a punch in the gut for sure, but the game is also about growing up and accepting consequences, even if you did the best you could.

I've really wanted to run an Oracle of Time/Ocarina of Time type campaign, with the party running around the same world in two time frames, before and after the BBEG takes over, burying items for their future selves and so on. I wouldn't allow too much time fuckery on the small scale though, or at least establish the concept of getting sucked into the time warp or whatever if you create too many paradoxes.

You could always try pulling a Homestuck, though I honestly doubt it could be executed without it getting incredibly messy: time travel is actually trivial, but unless you establish a stable time loop all you're doing is creating an offshoot "doomed" timeline where everyone dies and is destined to be quickly erased from existence.

>>48416695
Why would it be infinite? You could have to long a cool down between going back in time for you to be able to get more that one extra shot at something. For example, let's say going back in time 20 minutes takes 200 years of building mana. Or once every hour you can go back two minutes.

>>48416949
Could you give your old self amnesia so that you wouldn't remember it happening?

>>48415876
I think it depends on the extend.
If it's more off a small-ish feature, you could use it like Edge in Shadowrun 5e: It allows you to reroll unsuccessful dice. In Shadowrun, it's just Luck, but in a time-travel game you could reskin it by saying you went back in time a few seconds and tried again, knowing your mistakes.
You only have a limited pool, 1-6 Edge in SR, and it takes some time to regenerate in-game.
You can also burn your Edge, permanently reducing it by one but doing something major with it (usually used to prevent death).
In a Time-travel context "burning" your Time-Stat would mean going back a longer time, a few minutes or hours (a day max, imo).

Generally, in a PnP game time travel would be best handled "consciousness" based, like it is in LiS.
But one problem i see is a meta-gaming aspect: If one player character jumps back in time, would the other PCs retain their conscience? I am inclined to say "Yes, but": For flashing back, the reroll, i would say that they are usually too taken by surprise to actually do anything different (so it can't be abused in combat by the characters taking turns using it for group-rerolls) but maybe if they are clever about they maybe can use it outside of combat.
For the big jump they would be able to remember what happened without a problem after a few seconds of re-adjusting.

Of course all these thoughts are in a "Time-Magic" context, like Life is Strange or even Butterfly Effect, maybe super-soft sci-fi at best.

>Ctrl + F
>No time wizards
Excuse me, I meant LOOOOOOS MAGOOOOOOS DEEEEEEEEL TIEEEEEEEPOOOOOOOO.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Time_Wizards

How about time users can only rewind and so on only like ten minutes?

If you do it by fixed fate then sure. We had a game with a time jumper but if you pay attention and you're clever you could fairly easily beat her because she ends up stuck on rails so to speak, of fate.

>>48416154
Life is Strange plays out exactly the same in all situations until the end where you make the decision to sacrifice your new lesbo fuck buddy or the town.

File: noxu.gif (472KB, 500x250px) Image search: [Google]

472KB, 500x250px

>>48421426
>going back in time 20 minutes takes 200 years of building mana

you bastard

Best way to do it is to limit time and space according to the spells power: reversing a wound or sending the part into the future where it has healed naturally. A wall which slows down projectiles so you can dodge arrows fired at you with ease, but if you enter the zone you get slowed too. Being able to sacrifice yourself in a time freeze bubble with the enemy, transporting an enemy backwards in time just a few seconds.