I wanted to add a bit before I left for worksince today's my friday :D Timeworks is part of fate worlds in shadow , you can get the rules for both fate Core & fate Accellerated (FAE) here . Although I'd prefer to run core, we can do a game or two in fae if people are uncomfortable with starting in core. And below are a couple snippets for anyone saying "a time travel game? o.0" [START TRANSCRIPT] REYES: I’ve got some bad news for you, bud. Your life doesn’t amount to anything. [UNKNOWN]: You’re not the first person to tell me that. The guy who gave me this number said this call would be interesting. REYES: I don’t mean what I said in the usual way. I’m not trying to encourage you to go back to school, or to finally marry that girl you’ve been stringing along for the last few years. I don’t care if you quit drinking or straighten up and get an office job. You’ve heard all that before, and it’s never made a difference to you. It never will make a difference to you. You and I both know that. The sad fact is that when you pass from this mortal coil, no one will notice. And why should they? You’re a petty thief, a pickpocket in a world that’s going to go digital before you figure out a new way to pay the bills. Hell, even that girl you knocked up a few years back—the one with the kid you’d like to pretend isn’t yours—even she doesn’t show her pretty face when they put you in the ground. Your life today isn’t much better. Your brother hasn’t spoken to you in years. Your mother‘s been dead for a decade. Your father is due to kick the bucket next Tuesday, but you’ll be too busy on a job to say goodbye to him. Let’s face it; you’re all set to die alone, and the ride between here and death ain’t much to brag about. [UNKNOWN]: How (pause) how do you know all this? REYES: It’s obvious, isn't it? I’m from the future. And if you play your cards right, kid, you can be from the future too. For the most part, operatives in Timeworks begin the story as seasoned professionals, people who have already been through the dealignment process and journeyed back through time to fulfill the company’s instructions; they have past experiences both from before they were operatives and on the assignments that took place prior to the start of the campaign. [TIMEWORKS TRAINING MANUAL, PAGE 27] The Myth of the Butterfly Effect Many Timework operatives express a deep fear of displacement before engaging in their first alteration, claiming they are frightened of the potential side-effects that displacement can bring about in the timeline. Partially this is the result of popular media we embedded throughout history to discourage time travel, such as Mr. Ray Bradbury’s infamous work, A Sound of Thunder, in which a misplaced footstep in the Cretaceous leads to disastrous effects in the present. The truth is that the greatest difficulty we discovered when traveling through time is that our actions will not matter; rarely do we find unintended consequences. The timestream, or space-time continuum, is robust, and easily shakes off the death of a single butterfly or the application of an additional sniper on a grassy knoll. Our operatives are often forced to undertake drastic measures to successfully alter the timestream. Accidental timestream manipulation is rare and the effects are usually localized and contained. Anchors When new recruits are put through dealignment, they are encouraged to keep a single item with them to remind themselves of the timeline from which they came. Most prefer some sort of locket or photograph, but any sort of item is permitted, as long it can be carried on the recruit’s person. Timeworks staff refers to these objects as temporal displacement anchors, but most operatives call them anchors. Each and every anchor is unique, and operatives guard them with their lives. In essence, the dealignment process removes any temporal connection between operatives and their timelines. An individual operative has no past, nor future, only the present, a series of events that are happening to the operative right now. This means that paradox is impossible; an operative could travel backward in time and kill herself with no ill effects on her present because her “past” was only a set of experiences that she went through at some time previously. It has no bearing on her continued existence. Their anchor, therefore, is necessary to keep the operative grounded in that present. It allows the human mind to process what has been done to it through the dealignment process. Some Timeworks operatives develop unhealthy relationships with their anchors, believing them to be a mystical source of power or a way to communicate with otherworldly beings, but such psychosis is rare. For the most part, operatives simply keep the anchor nearby at all times. While no direct comment on this topic is ever made in public by Timeworks staff, it is widely known that operatives who lose their anchor develop serious emotional issues stemming from their dealignment. These operatives are usually decommissioned as quickly as HQ can identify them, but occasionally one will slip through and lose it while displaced. There are rumors that it is possible to steal another operative’s anchor, leading to a certain amount of secrecy on the part of suspicious operatives. These rumors, of course, are denied by Timeworks HQ. Changing the Timeline Making changes to the existing timeline is extraordinarily difficult. Timeworks operatives have to risk life and limb, and employ no small amount of craft, in order to achieve their objectives. Luckily, Timeworks HQ is often able to supply direct instructions arising from the research done by Timeworks archivists. These studious men and women analyze the timeline for key events, providing a roadmap for changes that need to be made in the field. The GM can often relay this information directly to the characters, moving the adventure along at a brisk pace. There are times, however, when the records are not clear enough for HQ to issue specific instructions to the operatives assigned to an alteration. In these cases, Timeworks typically sends experienced operatives who can discover the needed changes and execute them during the displacement. In order to discover the changes required, operatives may need to investigate the relationships between individuals, solve previously unsolved crimes, and pierce the veil of secret conspiracies. In essence, the unit must do reconnaissance on the targets and execute the mission simultaneously. Timeworks’ displacement technology is not precise enough to send a unit back to the exact minute that an event occurs, making investigative skills key to the success of any mission. Often, Timeworks HQ will send a unit back into the past weeks before a key event in order to give that unit time to make the needed changes before the event occurs. Timeworks HQ can then pull units back to the present, relaying crucial information or interrogating the operatives before sending them back to the timeline. On occasion this will result in operatives becoming disoriented, as they are jolted back and forth between the past and the present. I hope that gives prospective players an idea of what timeworks looks like on a basic level. I left out most of the mechanical/system level stuff, but that covers some of the foundational elements.
