TimeWatch - Review of an Amazingly Great Game

I'm a big time travel fan, so when TimeWatch was a Kickstarter project in 2014, I immediately backed it. Like most Kickstarters that keep on adding content as stretch goals, the final book was delivered 1.75 years later than scheduled. The good news was that upon pledging, we got a preliminary PDF, then a PDF version for copy editing, then a PDF with full images and corrections, then a final PDF and hard copy version. And several books with campaign support material. Multiple contributors for content (needing editorial changes for consistency of tone between writers) and art (switched from B&W to color as a stretch goal) were reasons for production delays. The final book ballooned in size to 392 pages.

The good news was that I was able to play TimeWatch in 2014 with the preliminary PDF. There weren't any scenarios written yet, but I found an amazing scenario written by Michael Rees: The Buffalo, The Pirate and the Consulting Detective. He has other scenarios on his website and his scenarios were so well loved that he was asked to contribute to the final book. See what happens when you have a time travel Kickstarter? Someone writes stuff for a game that hasn't been published yet and it winds up in the published game.

TimeWatch uses a modified Gumshoe system. I have mixed feelings about Trail of Cthulhu due to Gumshoe, but for TimeWatch, I LOVE the system.

What's different about TimeWatch?

Well, if the PCs can time travel, then most ordinary crimes can be easily solved, so the antagonists that the players face are always other time travelers. There are a variety of bad guys listed in the book, but there are two that are extensively show cased: Sophosaurs and Ezeru.

Sophosaurs vs Ezeru

The Sophosaurs are intelligent dinosaurs from the past who want to prevent the Asteroid from wiping them out, so the reign of dinosaurs continues into the future. The Ezeru are giant cockroaches from the future who rule Earth after humanity wipes itself out with nuclear weapons. They want to start WW3 early.

In between the Sophosaurs in the past and the Ezeru in the future are humans. Both races want to squeeze humanity out.

TimeWatch can be played in a variety of styles, humorous like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or serious like Timeless.

Most of the games are investigative. Instead of following clues forward, in this game, you follow the clues backwards in time. There's always some instigating event far in the past and its effect ripples out forwards in time until things change in a massive way. An example is a story written by Ray Bradbury: A Sound of Thunder.  TimeWatch is tasked to fix these disruptions to the "real" timeline.

How does TimeWatch know when something has gone wrong? Well, they have detection equipment seeded throughout time and when something changes suddenly like high levels of radiation or the equipment suddenly goes dead, they know something has gone wrong and they send a TimeWatch team to check it out and fix it.

E of TimeWatch

At the beginning of time, before the Big Bang is the Citadel, where TimeWatch HQ sits. TimeWatch agents are dispatched from there. In my game, the players' handler is E, he gives the mission briefing to the PCs. I also love James Bond, so I made a reference to it by using letters as titles (M and Q). I know, MiB also does this except they're referencing people's names.

How do they time travel? Each agent has an Autochron that allows them to time travel. You set the time and location and it takes you there in a few rounds. The Autochron will adjust your location so no locals can see you arrive. The more you travel in time, the less accurate the Autochron is, so if you travel thousands of years, you might arrive a decade too late. The Autochron creates a personal time bubble much like what happens in The Terminator.

Terminator Time Bubble

In my games, I like the idea of a watch being a time machine, so my Autochrons look like wrist watches. And I have a fondness for the story: The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything.

How do you know what in the timeline is broken? Well, the PCs have a device called a Tether that's like a local version of Google/Wikipedia. When you arrive, you can talk to people or check libraries and newspapers for deviations from your local knowledge store. In my games, the players are allowed to look up facts on their smart phones. This generally takes no more than 5 minutes and it enhances the role play experience. Their smart phone is a low tech version of a Tether.

Instead of the Stability/Sanity metric in Trail of Cthulhu, TimeWatch has Chronal Stability. Each time you time travel or create a paradox (when you do something that contradicts a known fact), you might lose Chronal Stability. If you annoy time too much, it might subsume you and merge you into the current timeline, modifying your memories, like skin growing over a splinter. If you do something totally bad, time may erase you from time, then even your TimeWatch team members won't remember you and no one can bring you back.

How do you know you've fixed everything? You can time travel back to beginning of the adventure and see if everything is back to normal. In one scenario, the PCs are given a device that can detect time drift and when the needle is in the green section, they know they've finished the mission. A bit meta and odd, but that works too.

In my games, E doesn't give out too much information and doesn't want to know how the agents solve the problem because if you know, then history is set and you're subject to paradox. It's the unwritten history missing from their Tethers that allows TimeWatch Agents to act freely.

A number of rules and pieces of equipment is to allow for better game play. I always bring this up because some new players would say some things don't make sense. And I would explain the mechanical reason for it and that would end the argument.

To prevent PCs from having to learn every possible language and infinite costume changes, the PCs have universal translators and Impersonator Meshes (in my world, they're holographic disguises). This mainly aids in game play when PCs jump from time to time and geolocation to geolocation.

Since killing someone in the past might erase your future, the agents are given stun weapons and MEM-tags. The MEM-tags sends an unconscious body back to the Citadel for memory wipe/modification. Once processed, the body is returned, so as to not disrupt the time stream.

What is fun about the game is that you get to play with history, learn history, and interact with it.

So far, I feel it is a daunting task to write a scenario from scratch. The good news is that the core book has 3 complete scenarios and 32 Time Seeds (inspirational ideas for your own game). The Kickstarter included a campaign "Behind Enemy Times" which contains 6 connected scenarios. "The Valkyrie Gambit," 3 stand alone scenarios. "Book of Changing Years," a faux history/diary of TimeWatch to be used as inspiration for your own games, in the spirit of "The Armitage Files" and "The Dracula Dossier." And I've a run several of Michael Rees' scenarios that he's posted on his website.

I definitely got more than my money's worth from the Kickstarter and I'm glad Kevin Kulp spent the time and care to get the books right.

The devil is always in the details. For example, it took me a long time before I noticed the following detail on the cover of the TimeWatch core book:

Battling Civil War Armies

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As an aside, I originally thought Chronal Stability checks were only done for time travel and paradox checks, but in "Behind Enemy Times" one scenario stated that any teleport with the Autochron also required a Chronal Stability check. So, I contacted Kevin Kulp and he explained that using the Autochron even for teleportation requires a Chronal Stability check. The rationale is again more of a mechanics thing where it would be more interesting if the PCs had to take local transport to get things done, but if they really, really had to teleport, then they can still do it by using the Autochron with the possibility of a Chronal Stability loss.

I generally GM, but one player wanted to GM a scenario, so I made a character who was really fun to play: Ted "Theodore" Logan of the Wyld Stallyns (link to character sheet).

 "Future Ted told me, Present Ted, that later, you dudes should run."
"Be excellent to each other."
"Party on, dudes."

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I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.

In the spoiler section below is:

Behind Enemy Times or why I got so excited that I had to write this blog post

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Behind Enemy Times

In "Behind Enemy Times," the scenario "Time Will Tell" brings in the idea that some rogue TimeWatch Agent is modifying history to be nicer and is revising the main database, so that his revised history is "correct." In this history, the PCs are told the correct history is that Abraham Lincoln is supposed to live and the PCs are sent to accomplish this mission. The players in my game felt very uncomfortable with that, but rolled with the punches and completed their mission.

The whole idea is whether TimeWatch should make the world a better place or whether history should be left alone. One of TimeWatch's punishment details is making sure Hitler isn't assassinated.

A later scenario in this campaign is "Rebel Heart."  In "Rebel Heart," the PCs are "burned" and told that they were to be stopped by other TimeWatch Agents because they're going to become traitors if they go on their next mission. This of course is supposed to be a trick, unbeknownst to the PCs, to get the PCs recruited by a Rebel TimeWatch group.

As published, after the PCs are recruited, they're told by the Rebel group to save Abraham Lincoln again. So, what has transpired is that TimeWatch finds out that the "correct" history was incorrect and Abraham Lincoln is supposed to die and have corrected it. So, basically, the PCs would have to save Lincoln a second time.

Well, this didn't seem right to me and didn't seem that interesting. So, instead I reversed it.

Instead, TimeWatch has left Lincoln alive as their "correct" history.  And the Rebels who are Restorationists (true keepers of history) have asked the PCs to have Booth kill Lincoln at Ford's Theater. The Restorationists also tell the PCs that they have discovered that some people high up in TimeWatch are indeed modifying history and hiding it.

After given this new mission by the Rebels, I sent a message to the PCs from TimeWatch congratulating them for infiltrating the Rebels and asked them to turn the Rebels in.

In "Rebel Heart," one subplot was the Rebels getting a British secret agent swapped for captured Russian agents. But the British agent is really a double agent and he's supposed to infultrate MI5 a la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

This was earlier revealed to the PCs by the Restorationists. The Restorationists are doing bad things in order to restore order.

In the published scenario, this causes great harm to Britian, but in my revised plot, it doesn't and things happen as they should.

The PCs after getting their message, realize they were now double agents.

So, the question comes in as to whether the PCs will turn in the Restorationists or kill Lincoln and indeed turn traitor.  Well, the PCs picked killing Lincoln and turning traitor.

As a GM, this was such a great moment for me. The PCs did turn traitor and the mission they weren't supposed to go on was indeed the mission that made them traitors. Wow!

The Restorationists have a plan to create a stable time pocket and use that as their base of operations; this will be something similar to the Citadel at the beginning of time.

In "Time Will Tell," the PCs are told that any paradox in the Citadel has a chance of destabilizing it and causing the Big Bang. Because of that, in "Rebel Heart," their Autochrons can't return to the Citadel and their MEM-tags are deactivated. In my game, I put up a red warning symbol on their Autochrons that they've never seen before. When they checked their user's manual, the icon was the "Your clearances have been revoked. Please contact TimeWatch." In my game, the PCs captured all of the TimeWatch Agents sent to capture/kill them and striped them of their equipment. And in the rest of the scenario, they used the kill team's equipment instead.

So, my upcoming plan is that after the Restorationists have created their stable time pocket, they're going to ask the PCs to cause a paradox at the Citadel and start the Big Bang, so that the Restorationists' TimeWatch would be the only TimeWatch. And you know that eventually the Citadel will have to go because if it doesn't, there's no universe.

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