Time War: History Gets Torn a New One (Interest Check)

[JONESCR]

This sounds great im very interested, im a huge history buff and would love to participate

As for historical events here are a few
The French Revolution
Battle of Hastings
Chinese Civil War/ Long March
Meji restoration
Signing of the declaration of independence
pearl harbor
Luther nailing the 95 theses
Hitler becoming chancellor
Darwin at galaapagos
battle of the spanish armada
storming of the bastille
Karl Marx meeting Friedrich Engles
Saving the works of aristotle
battle of segikahara

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

This looks like it could be pretty awesome.

However, if there is going to be PvP what happens to the losing party of a battle? Do they die and have to stop taking part? because after several episodes i imagine half the people will be dead, so i suggest that when someone loses a fight or whatever, instead of dying their character switches teams.

Either that or they just go a different character, but then dying wouldnt really have any consequence.

This is going to be the more problematic of problems I suppose.

Because the cast ins going to remain practically the same from Episode to Episode, combat will usually end up being non-lethal in ending.

You could have the losing party blasted back to the time period that Edison/Tesla are operating from to recuperate ready for the next episode.

Kind of like how death functions in City of heroes/villains/etc; They wear a device which (on detecting that characters have suffered massive trauma or are near death) teleports them to the nearest hospital to be reconstituted.

You're already fiddling with time and space so who says a death has to be a fixed point in time?

 

[bro1667]

napoleon bonarparte ready to serve under einstein!

 

[mcpop9]

I'm not sure how set you are on the rules, but I have a few ideas you can play around with.

Since part of your hook is how little things can have huge effects on an outcome, I think it would be pretty fun to base the game mechanics around that. Basically, players take turns altering some part of the situation to sabotage the enemy or tip the advantage in favor of your team.

Take the Franz Ferdinand assassination for example; Gavrilo Princip killed Ferdinand after his motorcade passed a cafe where Princip was eating after a failed assassination attempt earlier that day. Player one calls the cafe and makes a bomb threat, so the cafe is closed for the day and Princip is not there to see the motorcade and kill Ferdinand. Player two can reasonably assume the Princip went somewhere else to eat and diverts the motorcade toward where Princip is eating instead, using some means like creating an obstruction in the road or giving the driver bad directions (Ferdinand's driver had gotten really lost that day in reality, which lead to the original assassination). It goes back and forth like that until the other side runs out of ideas. The desired goal is to create a Rube Goldberg level sequence of events that at least sort of logically follow from one to the next.

I would say no directly murdering anyone, lest you have players calling "rocks fall everyone dies", which would ruin the whole thing. You are only allowed to alter facets of the situation then explain how that would lead to a different outcome.

As for the historical personalities recruited for the respective armies, I haven't quite got anything for that one. To be fair I recently finished playing Ghost Trick, which has very similar mechanics to what I was just describing, so maybe I'm a bit biased. It's your creation, do whatever you want with it. Just make specific rules that prevent the players from screwing with the system or winning too easily.

My concern is, is the entire Rp going to be this or are we going to have things like the battle of Iwo jima where we can directly influence the events by participating in them. Watching Julius ceasar ride into battle atop a M3 stuart light tank in the alamoe, paints an interesting picture in my mind.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

What time periods or events did you have in mind?

Currently I was thinking of a few scenarios

The Battle Of Waterloo
The Conference of Vienna
The Assassination of Julius Ceasar
The French Revolution
The Hundred Years War

I would also add:

The Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of the Bulge
The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand/The beginning of World War 1

All good suggestions.

I'd add some more varied regions and times: these seem grouped around Europe in the last couple centuries.

How about the Rajput trying to keep the Mughals out of India (16th century)
Byzantine Forces fighting against the rising tide of Islam in Palestine or Anatolia (7-8th century)
the battles between the Tlaxcala and the Aztecs (14-16th century, with possible guest stars the Spaniards)
The Japanese Shogun fighting to control his warlords (12-16th century)
Viking Raiders descending on Irish monasteries (10th century)

 

[JONESCR]

I call Miyamoto Musashi

 

[JONESCR]

My concern is, is the entire Rp going to be this or are we going to have things like the battle of Iwo jima where we can directly influence the events by participating in them. Watching Julius ceasar ride into battle atop a M3 stuart light tank in the alamoe, paints an interesting picture in my mind.[/quote]

Why not a bit of both? We could have limited direct intervention points like each team gets one per mission otherwise the timeline becomes too unpredictable or something like that. For this example one team might pull out a gun disguised as an anarchist and try and kill the duke.

 

[Knusper]

I'm interested but I've never role played on the forums before. Also if we're playing as historical figures, can I have Giuseppe Garibaldi?

 

[mcpop9]

Why not a bit of both? We could have limited direct intervention points like each team gets one per mission otherwise the timeline becomes too unpredictable or something like that. For this example one team might pull out a gun disguised as an anarchist and try and kill the duke.

Exactly my point. a bit of both worlds would suit me and quite a few other people best, but i can only speak for myself.

 

[JONESCR]

Why not a bit of both? We could have limited direct intervention points like each team gets one per mission otherwise the timeline becomes too unpredictable or something like that. For this example one team might pull out a gun disguised as an anarchist and try and kill the duke.

Exactly my point. a bit of both worlds would suit me and quite a few other people best, but i can only speak for myself.

sorry im new and dont know how to inception your quotes. Some characters would obviously be better at combat and others stealth and strategy you should accommodate all strengths

 

[Pappytech]

I'm going to throw out the Peloponnesian War as a potential battleground.

Would also like to snatch up Archidamus II as a character.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I'm not sure how set you are on the rules, but I have a few ideas you can play around with.

Since part of your hook is how little things can have huge effects on an outcome, I think it would be pretty fun to base the game mechanics around that. Basically, players take turns altering some part of the situation to sabotage the enemy or tip the advantage in favor of your team.

Take the Franz Ferdinand assassination for example; Gavrilo Princip killed Ferdinand after his motorcade passed a cafe where Princip was eating after a failed assassination attempt earlier that day. Player one calls the cafe and makes a bomb threat, so the cafe is closed for the day and Princip is not there to see the motorcade and kill Ferdinand. Player two can reasonably assume the Princip went somewhere else to eat and diverts the motorcade toward where Princip is eating instead, using some means like creating an obstruction in the road or giving the driver bad directions (Ferdinand's driver had gotten really lost that day in reality, which lead to the original assassination). It goes back and forth like that until the other side runs out of ideas. The desired goal is to create a Rube Goldberg level sequence of events that at least sort of logically follow from one to the next.

I would say no directly murdering anyone, lest you have players calling "rocks fall everyone dies", which would ruin the whole thing. You are only allowed to alter facets of the situation then explain how that would lead to a different outcome.

As for the historical personalities recruited for the respective armies, I haven't quite got anything for that one. To be fair I recently finished playing Ghost Trick, which has very similar mechanics to what I was just describing, so maybe I'm a bit biased. It's your creation, do whatever you want with it. Just make specific rules that prevent the players from screwing with the system or winning too easily.

If you keep this up I'll have to make you Co-Gm.

This is a great suggestion man.

I like the idea of non-direct interference, that would really take the game into new exciting ground. For instance, we could have scenario set in the book-burning of the First Emperor of China in 213-206; one team is tasked with rescuing a certain scholar (or keeping him safe long enough to write out a scroll, which they then save), while the opposing team is trying to kill him. The defenders could sabotage a ship, forcing it to stay at port long enough for the scholar to reach it, while the attackers try to lure the Emperor's forces by staging a rebellion in the area, causing lots of troops to come in and lock down the borders.

 

[mcpop9]

If this gets off the ground, shotty Vlad the impaler.

 

[Grim327]

This seems really interesting. If this rp happens that I call dibs on U.S General George S. Patton.

 

[CplDustov]

I came hoping for a Doctor Who thread, but this works too. The premise is certainly interesting in theory, but I don't see any way it could be played out in practice. The first and most obvious question is why either party would bother with anything other than trying to kill the other one's mother, since erasing the enemy's leader pretty much means you win by default.

Maybe they are all orphans?


A further idea to the mix. A timeline of various historical aspects could be drawn up.

Weapons and vehicles
Technology
Politics

After or during play each team gets to choose one of the aspects to advance, the winners get to choose a second.

example. If om the industrial revolution the "natural advance" might be for example.

Industrial ----- WWI ----- Cold War ----- Modern Age

WEAPONS
Trains/ ----- tanks, planes ----- helicopters ----- AI drones
muskets ----- machine guns ----- jets ----- RC drones,

TECHNOLOGY


steam power ----- diesel power ----- nuclear power ----- plasma engines

POLITICS
empires ----- national alliances -----> superpower ----- World Govt./terrorist cells

The teams might both choose to develop weapons tech (+3)

After jumping to what would be WWI we would have:
AI Predator drones running on steam engines at the height of the an Emperor's Rule. This effect would carry over to any jumps forward in time but not backwards.
however if you make more changes, further in the past the effect would stack so a return visit to our empire might now be a corporate govt using nanobots in the 1950s.

I get you prefer something historical but you can just create a cut off point and say, nothing more advanced than WWII except time travel and nuclear power if you want to make some exceptions.

I'd toyed with this theory before but it could be an opportunity to put it into practice

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

You're going to have to have some form of safe bubble for each of two faction leaders to operate from to avoid too much mindscrewing.

Sort of like a small, protected, fixed-time, space that doesn't change regardless of what happens in the past that each leader has set up for themselves. Perhaps just a bit of lab space for each faction.

Neatly sidesteps all the potential butterfly effects or paradoxes any marauding players might cause

e.g killing ancestors meaning no descendants, stopping creation of electricity meaning time machines don't function, removing the cause of dispute between the two so nobody ever goes back in time so the dispute cause isn't fixed so people go back in time, etc


Alternatives:

-You could use the theory that history will always happen just in different or delayed ways and only the minor details are subject to change. e.g you stopped the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand? 1 year later widespread rioting in Serbia due to still not being free ignites the powder keg of pre-world war one. The fun here would be in working out how things could have still happened

-Some form of "time police" working against both sides to restore the time line. These could even take an active role and be controlled by the gm or a neutral player.

 

[Zen Toombs]

-snip-

I express interest. What do I need to do to join once this starts?

 

[A Gent of Villainous Intent]

-snip-

I express interest. What do I need to do to join once this starts?

Pick a figure and sign him up.

ALTHOUGH

-Some form of "time police" working against both sides to restore the time line. These could even take an active role and be controlled by the gm or a neutral player.

First off

TIME SQUAD!

Second, a neutral third party could be a good conflict for the season finales.
This is a good idea, though will probably be implemented later on.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

One last thing, if you try and kill Hitler or stop another Empire of some sort use Godwins Law Of Time Travel.
As the amount of time-traveling you do increases, the probability of Hitler winning World War II approaches one.
This can also apply to other warlords, ETC.
( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel )
might come in handy for a Finale.

 

[hobohazard]

I DIB ANDREW JACKSON!
http://www.cracked.com/article_15895_the-5-most-badass-presidents-all-time.html

WTF ninga'd! oh well il have to use suleiman the magnificent instead