Any good sources for time travel adventures?

[Giltonio_Santos]

I'm playing Chrono Trigger again. It's been a long time since my last replay, and this time it got me thinking about having time travel as the main theme for my next homebrew campaign. I decided to start this thread, so I could share some thoughts about what I want to do and ask for some advice from fellow DMs who have run this kind of adventure in the past. I'm basically looking for three things:

- Good sources (TSR/WotC or third party) for rules and inspiration;
- Any advice from your own experience;
- Ideas on building my own campaign with time traveling adventurers.

Since Chrono Trigger is my main inspiration, I'm almost set on the following that I'd like to have as part of our campaign:

- A threat to the future of humanity that characters should try to avoid;
- At least one powerful item that they need to assemble with pieces from different ages;
- A sandbox-style playing pattern, where they are allowed to decide where to go and what to fix, in order to prepare for their final confrontation.

So, any thoughts/advice about how to run it?

 

[Elderbrain]

The "official" source for time travel in D&D is the 2nd edition accessory Chronomancer, which details how time travel works and includes spells and magical items. I don't personally know of any third party rules, but perhaps somebody else does. You could also use portals between times, create a new spell ("Time Shift"), or let the Pcs find an Artifact that does the job. As far as threats, you could use one or more of the following villians: Tharizdun, an imprisoned god that wishes to destroy all reality; Vecna, a god who tried to remake reality by entering Sigil, the City of Doors; Ilwiggv, a very high-level evil wizardess from the Greyhawk setting (easily a level 30 threat), one of the Elder Evils from the 3.5 book of the same name, or create your own.

(BTW, I am also playing Chrono Trigger on my ancient PS One... do you have Chrono Cross? )

 

[AmerginLiath]

First thing that comes to mind is the "Anvil of Time" from DUNGEON #86, a time-travel Dragonlance adventure written by Tracy Hickman with a dungeon that transforms and moves the characters through time. It's 3.0 but might offer some ideas (I think it's available in one of the Best of Dungeon issues too), along with some chronomancy spells.

 

[Eltab]

One of the DragonLance trilogies (my memory fails me as to titles) has Raistlin time-travel to the period just after the Cataclysm to recover a missing artifact. (It's "missing" because he stole it and returned to his normal time period.) You might find inspiration there.

 

[Eltab]

Advice: go buy a bottle of Excedrin. Because "time travel" is Excedrin Headache Number (SQRT(PI * -1)).

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

(BTW, I am also playing Chrono Trigger on my ancient PS One... do you have Chrono Cross? )

I started playing Cross once but never got to finish it. I'm thinking about starting it again after finishing this playthrough of Trigger. It's one of those games I feel bad about not playing enough at the time of release. These games may not have the same visual effects of recent ones, but their stories certainly endured!

 

[David Boute]

Take a look at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/146508/time-stories . It can probably serve as inspiration.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Dragonlance's Legends of the Twins 3rd edition supplement is all about alternate timelines and contains a remake adventure for the Anvil of Time.

Once ran the AD&D trilogy that involved "Dragon's Rest," and it required the party to recover things from various points in time by entering limited portals. A time-travel lite adventure.

Once attempted to homebrew a Dragonlance campaign wherein the mortal wizard Raistlin succeeded in deposing the gods, and the party was sent back in time in an overly elaborate plot to stop it. Got way too complicated and decided my players might be overwhelmed.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

There were two things I can think of that deal with time travel and they were 1st edition I believe. The first is "Cormanthyr Empire of the Elves" dealing with the Arcane Age of Myth Drannor prior to the fall which was accessed through time travel portals in the Ruined Myth Drannor - it gave Campaign information about the time period 700 years in the past. The other was an old "Role Aids" module I think put out by Mayfair called "Elven Banner" where the PCs go back in time to prevent the destruction of a powerful Elven artifact.

 

[Napftor]

I wrote a book for 3.5 about 12 years ago called "Temporality" which is available in pdf and print. Chuck Rice also wrote a time travel supplement at about the same time the name of which escapes me. There's two possible resources for inspiration.