Entry: TIME TRAITOR

[Kuma_Pageworks]

I have three contending ideas - two better formed than the third. Here's the first (and front-runner so far).

TIME TRAITOR

2x6 +14 days
TEAM
LAW
ACTOR

In the first session of the game, the players have a 'typical' time-travel action-adventure on the first session, then at the end of the first session they come back to find the future all screwed up. Cue cliffhanger.

Two weeks later, they have a second session where they go back to try and figure out what went wrong, and try to reconstruct the first session using only their notes and consensus. The trick is that one of them is a traitor, and who it is isn't apparent even to the players themselves, because the betrayal happens "after" the second mission. I'm trying to figure out how it's going to work, using 'consensus points' - basically, if your version of things rules the day, you score points. The traitor is the person with the most (least?) points at the end of the second mission.

The real sticking point here is that in the second mission has to at least have *some* structure to it (perhaps it'd have to be based around a recent historical event that everyone could refer to) in order to hang the narrative on, but also have a great deal of imperfect information, so that the actions of the characters, and the recollections of the players have some real fuzziness to them.

I'm thinking that note-taking will be limited to 10 (20?) entries on a 'journal page' supplied with the game. There would also be 'checkpoints' in each session - the players have the first hour to deal with, say, making sure that Oswald gets to Dallas. At the end of the hour, it's over and whatever else they may need to recollect about the first session is lost. Since you're simultaneously playing the second session and 'reliving' the first session, there's a big chance for slippage there.

All of this makes me wonder if I need one person (a GM-like person) to manage the proceedings and take scrupulous notes to compare the two sessions and deal out Slippage. I want to avoid it, but I don't know if I can.

[Doug Ruff]

Ooh, interesting. I have a weakness for time travel games (and for anyone reading who gets the reference, when are we going to finish SW?)

One early suggestion, if you're up for it - the journal is the consensus. If something happens in the first session, but isn't recorded in the journal, it's fair game for revision in future sessions.

Conflicts can then centre around what gets to go in the journal.

[Kuma_Pageworks]

I was thinking that each player would have their own journal page, and they'd have that to fall back on (maybe providing extra 'oomf' to their bid to resolve the situation) - but one single journal page for the entire group ... that's an idea.

[matthijs]

Sounds like a lot of book-keeping, and a bit of an intellectual exercise. Other time-travel games (esp. Continuum) have been criticized for being too demanding when it comes to logging of events.

I suggest that you playtest a few minutes in your head and see how much - and what - you need to write down, to get a clear image of what's required.

Any way to use something else - ready-made events, for example - so you don't need to write as much?

Consensus reality: Have you read LeGuin's "A fisherman of the inland sea" short story collection?

[dindenver]

Hi!
Maybe every starts the game with a supply of beads, tokens, poker chips, etc and they spend one to add to the narration.
The player with the most beads at the end of the session is the Traitor and must work actively in the second session to undo things?
The reason being the more tokens you have the less you contributed to the story and the less details are clear in your mind?

[Kuma_Pageworks]

I’ve done some more hashing - in fact, the original disturbance was caused by the traitor, so one of the players is chasing themselves. Every character will have some reason for wanting to be a traitor to Time, and so the idea is that they try to control the narration in order to ensure that thy are not unmasked. Of course, since no one knows if they are, in fact, the past and future traitor, everyone has to work towards not only covering up the past, but implicating someone else.

And so in the final wash, the identity of the traitor is also done by consensus, not by any arbitrary means. I’m also introducing a relationship map, so that you have your relationships to each of the other team members mapped out. If you’re too close to the (eventual) traitor, you’re painted with the stain of guilt-by-association. So you need to form coalitions to make sure that your closest comrades aren’t traitors either. Unless, of course, you become convinced that they are the traitors, in which case you need to distance yourself from them and torpedo them. It’s a complete paranoia mindfuck played out in hyperdimensional topology.

Also, in order to achieve the greatest amount of security, no one time-traveller is invested with all of the abilities of time travel. One person controls the distance they travel in each jump, one controls the ‘flow’ - stepping the travellers in and out of the timeline or pulling them back into their hyperspace cocoon. One controls spatial movement, and so on. So whoever controls the narration has to have pull with the other players to make their plan work.

I’m thinking primarily of a token-based approach (thanks, dindenver!), minimal stats. I’m going to bang out a first draft tonight, hopefully, and as I write it I hope to get this solidified even more. But with 32 hours (+/–) to get this finished, word count is becoming a top priority.

This just occured to me - # of chips at the end of the first session = a stat called 'Suspicion' - how likely you are to be the traitor at the end of the second session. When you bid for narrative control, you win the chips if you win the bidding, giving you more control. The more control you have, the more likely you are to abuse your authority, making you suspicious. So you have to be a 'team player' in order to not be painted at the traitor.

[Kuma_Pageworks]

And as for bookkeeping - players can only make notes on one side of a 3x5 card, and can't hold onto it between sessions. There's the control of narration, which comes with the entries in the official log - but people can also bid for 'amendments', which are made in secret and then re-typed to remove incriminating handwriting.

[Kuma_Pageworks]

And a quick note on Continuum - I think that the criticism about bookkeeping is unfair, mostly because the keeping of detailed records in order to avoid frag is part and parcel of the way that time-travel works. Continuum is all about putting you in the mindset of a Spanner - and record-keeping is core to that. (And I'd imagine that if there were Spanners, it'd be central to their lives as well.)

[Mark Bravura]

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And as for bookkeeping - players can only make notes on one side of a 3x5 card, and can't hold onto it between sessions. There's the control of narration, which comes with the entries in the official log - but people can also bid for 'amendments', which are made in secret and then re-typed to remove incriminating handwriting.
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Another posibility is to audio record the dialog- albeit I'm not sure how you'd incorporate it. The bidding factor is definately intriguing. With audio, it would be the same principle, except remixed.

M.B.

[shehee]