[Campaign Idea] Stranded in Time

[Catsmate]

Stranded in Time.

This is a bit looser than my normal ideas as it's pretty rough draft. If anyone has ideas, please contribute them,


Mostly AITAS games, as in the TV series, seem to involve moving though time and space in a more-or-less random fashion, or at least in no particular sequence. There are exceptions, the Earthbound or exile model or quests. This campaign is a journey through human history in short hops.


Premise.
Somewhen in antiquity, a time traveller is attempting to meddle and alter history. This meddling goes disastrously wrong¹ and a small group of people from various time periods are dragged back to the meddler's base. He² attempt to subdue them, they resist and there's a fight. He loses and they (mostly) survive.

So, after the prologue things begin with seven people³ stuck in antiquity (I'm going to assume 43 CE in Roman Britain so parts of The Legions of Death could be reused; however this could be changed), in a hostile, barbaric wasteland, unable to speak the language. Ooops

So what do they do? Well they can try and adapt, fit in, or establish themselves in power using the resources around and their knowledge. But this isn't that sort of campaign.
The may wait for rescue, assuming someone will come. Of course that 'someone' could be hostile. They may have the idea of causing a minor disruption to time to attract attention⁴.

Or they can emulate the novel/films The Flight of the Phoenix and build their own time machine and go home under their own power.

Now this has several plausibility problems, and while I class Doctor Who as more sci-fantasy than sci-fiction, I do like some consistency, logic, and reasonable limits to plot devices. In this case one of the survivors has the skills and knowledge to actually build a (crude) time machine of the Sinclair Field type. However given the limited resources available the craft will be short ranged and slow, so several 'hops' will be needed to reach home (i.e. the twentieth or twenty-first centuries) or somewhere where they can obtain help⁵.

So they build their machine, load it with scavenged supplies and head off. They jump short periods (I'm thinking 30-100 years) into the future, stop to recharge, rest, camp and restock their sir supply.

Of course there are complications; important historical events, other time travellers, aliens, groups who are aware of time travellers, running out of tea, disease, hostile locals et cetera.

It's a bit like the classic 'lost travellers trying to find home' trope in the vein of Sliders, The Time Tunnel, Quantum leap and Voyagers!. Or early Doctor Who to a degree.
The have a destination, and a plan. All they need is persistence and time. And some luck............


OK, anyone curious? I have more notes if there's interest.
















1. As usual.

2. Most megalomaniacal time meddlers in the Whoniverse seem to be male.

3. Why seven? Why not, it seems to be a popular group size. Look at It, The Galileo Seven, Seven Samurai, et cetera.

4. Vespasian and Claudius are around. Roz used a similar tactic in Christmas on a Rational Planet.

5. Somewhere like the Hourglass Club, or a location where they'd plausibly find other time travellers.

[grinch]

I must admit The Time Tunnel did spring to mind immediately as well. I do rather like the idea of a campaign where a group doesn’t intentionally plan on going on adventures but finds themselves involved anyway. They just want to get back home.

In fact, now I have this image of the group after getting so close to their goal of twentieth and twenty first century accidentally overshooting and landing sometime in the twenty second or even further.

Now they must try and do the same journey but in reverse!

[Catsmate]

Sept 1, 2021 14:21:27 GMT grinch said:

I must admit The Time Tunnel did spring to mind immediately as well. I do rather like the idea of a campaign where a group doesn’t intentionally plan on going on adventures but finds themselves involved anyway. They just want to get back home.

In fact, now I have this image of the group after getting so close to their goal of twentieth and twenty first century accidentally overshooting and landing sometime in the twenty second or even further.

Now they must try and do the same journey but in reverse!

Sliders was my first though when the whole thing came to me.
I did think this could be a game where you spring it on the players, without telling them of the time travel elements in advance. So the history lecturer, business executive, hacker, android cop, physics student, UNIT soldier et cetera are somewhat out of their comfort zone. But that would depend on your players.

And I like the 'overshoot' idea. Though my initial characters were from ~1960 to ~2040 anyway.

[Catsmate]

OK, there seems to be some positive interest so I'll continue.

The basic concept is a small group of people involuntarily stranded in antiquity building a crude time machine and heading home. While of course having adventures along the way.


The Sled.
It's a lashed together craft, built on the chassis of a large wooden cart, the wheels and axles replaced by those from a time displaced UNIT Land Rover. On top is a hut-like structure made from wood and salvaged material (especially the body of the landy).
Inside is the seating for the passenger, a control console (another mix of technologies using Elise’s notebook computer as the workstation). This controls the environmental sensors (monitoring oxygen and carbon dioxide), the power supplies and the improvised Sinclair Field drive.

The drive is short ranged and, like most Sincalir Field devices, somewhat inaccurate; hence multiple ‘hops’ to get home will be needed.

• While, in general, the Whoniverse takes no account of the duration of time travel involving TARDISes and Vortex Manipulators (it's either instant or long enough for a conversation usually), more primitive techniques take a considerable amount of elapsed time for it's trips. This 'pseudo-velocity' is basically a multiplier of the 'inside' time, so a velocity of 30,000 (seconds per second) means that travelling a century takes about thirty hours for the passengers.
  
• The improvised time sled requires frequent stops, both to recharge the drive’s power source (by using the Land Rover's engine¹, deploying photo-voltaic sheeting², a bicycle generator or otherwise) and to refresh the air supply and for the passenger to stretch and take ‘bio-breaks’.

The breaks in the journey are a plot device, enabling the PCs to get involved with local problems or otherwise entangled in adventures.

---

The Sinclair field.
The Sinclair Field is a time travel technique form my gaming, based on one from the old Time Riders RPG. It's relatively easy to build such a device, once you have some chronos crystals, magnets, conductive wire and a power source. Ideal for the stranded time traveller or freetimer.
Technically it is a form of chrono-gravitational technology, an exotic variation on the gravitational field; as a consequence, it naturally follows the gravity field of the planet you're on, so the planet doesn't spin out from under you or anything awkward like that. Using the same gravitational aspects, you can use a Sinclair-field device to fly, though the field is bound to the gravitational field in which it began the journey.

• A device to generate the field, is rather simple to make and repair. However it cannot operate outside a strong gravitational field and is thus limited to travel on a planetary surface or nearby. (LEO is possible, GEO or Luna is not)
• The field can be used as a simple counter-gravity propulsion. Trying this while travelling in time is a Bad Idea. As is mixing it with most forms of counter-gravity propulsion.
• Within a Sinclair field you are ‘out of phase’ with
  normal time; you see the effects of the exterior time flow rushing or
  crawling by, either backwards or forwards, depending on the strength and
  polarity of the field.
• From outside the field, you are non-existent for
  all mundane purposes (though faults in the device's field can cause 'ghostlike' images visible outside, or electrical or optical effects.
  
• On the plus side, a Sinclair-field machine is easy
  to build (once you know the trick), and is fairly easy to maintain. If
  you were stranded in the Roman Republic³, it might take you a few months
  to re-create the necessary technology, but you could probably make
  yourself a crude Sinclair-field device, sufficient to get you to a more
  advanced period anyway.
• On the minus side, Sinclair-field machines are comparatively fragile. Bits often wear out, break down, and strand the operator. They require constant tending and maintenance, and they seldom work properly after taking damage.
• If you try to move through time and space simultaneously, a wide variety of forces can throw you off course, even thunderstorms.They are also prone to being effected by gravitational effects.
• Although a Sinclair machine in flight is unapparent to most senses and indeed sensors known to the 20th century, it is very easy for other time travellers to spot one. Even stationary a Sinclair-field device gives off hard-to-shield echoes for active chronal sensors that can scan for them. Hiding from other time travellers requires the device is disassembled.
• At high temporal speeds, it is hard to aim a Sinclair machine at a precise date. Some users establish beacons for navigation.
  

---

Dramatis Personae.
A sample group of characters. Most games probably have fewer but I have six regular players in one game and five in another.

Elise McCann, a business executive from 2020. Determined, organised and calm. The leader

Tabatha Curtis, an archaeology postgraduate from 1997. Useful historical and survival skills. Really doesn't like being patronised.

Aiden Berger, a history lecturer from 2004 with a good general knowledge of the past (at least what is known of it) and a smattering of useful languages like Old English, Normal French and Latin.

Rhys Gallagher, a UNIT Sergeant from 1973 with some experience of the weird. Good practical skills, some technical knowledge.  Originally accompanied by lance corporal driver, now dead.

Heather Durham, a physics student from the University of Cambridge in 1963, tutored by Rachel Jensen, a contemporary of
Allison Williams (doctoral student), Anne Travers and Ruth Ingram (also undergraduates). Brilliant but excitable, young and somewhat naive.

• If the GM chooses to go with that option, she's had her brain enhanced by contact with the meddler's equipment in a blatant rip-off of 'Doctor-Donna'. This means that she can understand vast amounts (in game enhanced Intellect, Boffin, Bench Thumping, Vortex, Technically Adept traits) when she concentrates, at the cost of headaches, nose bleeds, failing unconscious randomly and other issues.
  

Boba Sykes, an android police detective from 2041. Humanoid body, but with indigo skin and reddish-purple hair, a decidedly unnatural appearance. Human level intelligence and capability.

• Inspired by Roko Basilisk⁴ from Questionable Content. This is not the typical type of superhuman robot, she has a relatively short battery life and is moderately delicate, needing maintenance.
• However she can upload historical language packs and speak various languages.
  

Halima Hendricks, a security consultant and hacker from 2052. Looks fairly 'normal', except for the facial piercings and turquoise. Has several cybernetic implants, including a brain-link. This allows her to overlay Augmented Reality data directly on her senses, having her slate computer translate for her and perform various useful tricks.

Why them? They were in the wrong place and time; when the meddler's time portal/scoop malfunctioned it collapsed a nanoscopic  wormhole, scattering chronons, tachyons and gravitons (along with exotica like snarks and ozians) in all directions. And not just the ones mentioned in twenty-first century physics⁵. The seven (and a couple of others who didn't survive) were too close to something that resonated to the energy and sucked them back. This could have been a chronos crystal, a piece of alien technology or anything else appropriate. They arrived with some of their surroundings, possibly including something useful.

• In the case of Sergeant Gallagher this included a UNIT Land Rover and a lance corporal, who was killed.
• Of course if the GM prefers the landy could be intact and operational, with the time machine built into it, allowing the party some mobility.
  

If the GM doesn't want to use the Doctor-Donna trope Heather could be replaced by:

• Abigail Larsen, an independent time traveller originally from the 1960s but dragged away from her camping holiday in the southwestern United States in 1869, where she was observing the Powell expedition. Her time machine doesn't arrive but she's familiar with advanced technology and may have some useful equipment.
  
• Alesha Chen, the involuntary⁶ assistant and lackey to the time meddler who started the whole business. Came from the far future, good technical skills.

Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?










1. Until they run out of fuel.

2. Assuming the weather is suitable.

3. Even without some advanced technology to salvage.

4. Without the bread fetish. Probably.

5. Named the 'tau' and 'te' axes by Thomas Noon in the classic basic textwork of temporal theory, her seminal Introduction to Polytonic Etiology (Phaxet Press, Tychograd, 1ed 2834).

6. Or perhaps not, she may be lying.

[markrand]

I dimly remember that RPG and the only drive that comes to mind is the Holmes Drive, the one used by the hero in the H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine".

[Catsmate]

Sept 2, 2021 12:25:28 GMT markrand said:

I dimly remember that RPG and the only drive that comes to mind is the Holmes Drive, the one used by the hero in the H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine".

That's the one .
Developed by Sherlock's smarter older sister, who was The Time Traveller.