Monday, February 8, 2016

Rules for Time Travel

1. Players choose a token and place it on the board.  All players start in the present.  Tokens to choose from include a Delorian, a phone booth, a police box, a hot tub and the Starship Enterprise.

2. Players start the game with two Event cards.  If you have less than two Event cards at the start of your turn, draw up to two.  Event cards can be played at any time, as long as they are appropriate to the time period.  For example, if you are 26 years in the future, you could play 'Learn the Outcomes of Sporting Events' card.  You could not, however kill your own grandfather, because he died three years before you were born.

3. Players take turns rolling dice and travelling through time.  To do this, the player rolls two dice.  They may then move up to the number shown, in years, into the past or the future.  Note that wormholes are free and do not use up any of of your time travel allotment.

4. Players may forego their roll and choose instead to explore the time period they are in.  Some types of exploration are Meeting Famous Historical Characters, Going Native, or Changing the Timeline.  If your time machine is broken, then your only option will be to explore the time period until you have repaired your time machine.  This can be done by 'borrowing' a locomotive, obtaining plutonium or getting advice from a 70's sitcom character actor.

5. At the end of each player's turn, they should draw a card from the Temporal Anomaly deck.  These are special events, both good and bad, that affect all players.  Simply read the instructions aloud for all to hear.  You may find yourself falling in love with someone from another era or playing the game over and over for all eternity.

6. Alternate Timelines.  If you change an event in the past, players in the present or future may be affected.  If so, they must place their tokens on their sides until the timeline is repaired.  The players themselves may find their bodies becoming insubstantial.  If a player is unable to roll the dice or move their token, they are eliminated from the game.

7. Fixing the Timeline.  To fix something that has gone wrong, check the Event card in question.  It will indicate what needs to be done and the level of difficulty, 1-12.  For example, if you've killed your father and are in danger of ceasing to exist, you can attempt to sleep with your mother, which has a difficulty rating of 8.  Roll two dice and get a score of 8 or better to succeed.

8. Paradoxes.  In the event of a Paradox, the universe collapses in on itself.  Everyone loses.

9. To win the game, a player will need to successfully insert themselves into past events in such a way that all players remember it having happened already and don't understand why the game even needs to be played.