Sigh... So time travel just doesn't work in V&V in a way that makes a fantastic and scary/exciting story!
To begin with, time travel is a subset of Dimensional Travel. It's "official" name would be "Dimensional Travel, type 2." The character has a base chance of I x 3 vs percentage dice to succeed in travelling to a time of their choice. The PR cost would be ten. Failure results in consulting a chart to determine how far off-target the character is from their chosen time. Failure also means that the character is unable to use Time Travel to return to their time of origin without additional (paranormal?) means.
The rules also provide an option for players to transport more than just themselves. Given the "social" nature of RPGs, it would likely be to a player's advantage to choose the "portal" option instead of the "teleport" option.
Now here's where it starts to let us down. The rules explicitly say that time traveler(s) are "...shifting to an alternate plane which *simulates* a time and place on Earth, but it is not the certain future or the actual past." This verbage blurs the lines between D&D and V&V, so a better way of stating it would probably be "...shifting to an alternate universe." So... The difference between the types of Dimensional Travel are nothing more than cosmetic.
Let's pause for a second to analyze this. Based on this broad view of time travel, you could say that the tv series Sliders is time travel!? But instead of moving forward or backward in time, they're moving "sideways." In other words: they're moving to the same point in time in a different universe. With a slight adjustment, Quinn could conceivable modify his device into a time machine. But their problem of finding their way home would remain.
I use the Sliders tv show as an analogy to provide a more palatable explanation of time travel in V&V. It becomes easier to understand exactly WHY time travel lets us down in V&V.: you can't change the "real" past or the "real" future because you're going to someone else's and not your own! This also solves a lot of the paradox problems, btw: going back in time and killing yourself as an infant would have no repercussions in your original timeline. ALTHOUGH, a mischievous GM might say something like "you changed the past and caused this new timeline to diverge from it's natural course. So now you can't plot your way back to your original timeline until you change it back."
"But what about Sands of Time?" While not easily explained, it CAN be explained: someone in an alternate timeline travelled to the past and just happened to land in the player's past and changed it. When the players travelled back in time to stop them, they actually travelled to a DIFFERENT universe and stopped yet ANOTHER alternate enemy there. However, at the same time, alternates of the PLAYERS also travelled back in time to the player's past and performed exactly the same actions as the players! Is your head hurting, yet? Lol! When the players and all alternates return to their own timelines, they won't see the difference unless the GM trips up and forgets a detail that SHOULD HAVE created a paradox and/or a major change in the timeline. However, the GM can say that since the players didn't change their own timeline, this paradox or change didn't come into effect.
So, in essence, the word "paradox" can be replaced by "plot seed!" Lol!
But not being able to change the "real" past basically nerfs time travel and makes it harder to get a good story out of it. This is really too bad, because it neutralizes the awesome plot seed I had in mind for a new adventure for V&V! Sigh...
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