# Agents of Change: The Time Travel RPG



## Harrrbinger (Nov 22, 2012)

This looks cool.  As anyone who knows me know, I'm a sucker for time travel stuff.

Agents of Change: The Time Travel RPG: How much of our past are you willing to change, to save the future? In this tabletop RPG, you will answer this question. What are you willing to change in the past, to save the future? This game tells the story of agents for one of two factions, who project their consciousnesses into the past in order to preserve or upset the fabric of time. Both sides believe that their vision of the future is correct, but the truth of the matter can only be discovered by your agents.

Come and become an Agent of Change.


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## Lwaxy (Nov 22, 2012)

Sure sounds interesting.


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## bigeshu (Nov 23, 2012)

Hey!

Thanks for posting about my kickstarter. We're over half way there!

I'm posting updates on the site or my blog, but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you guys have.


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## Lwaxy (Nov 24, 2012)

We do similar RPGs a lot (like going back in time and prevent Kennedy's death), lots of fun. 

I'm wondering though, will there be source material about historical events, or will the GMs have to do all the research? Doing research for the Kennedy assassination alone took lots of time.


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## bigeshu (Feb 5, 2013)

Sorry about the lack of updates, but when I was working on the kickstarter I could not access the boards. We do have a prototype character sheet and cover art that's shown at my blog which you can look up if you search for gamerwritings blogspot on google (I can't yet post links) As far as the question about research, we are planning on doing timeline supplements where we do research ourselves on small periods of time with sample adventures or missions within that time period. We can't cover every period, of course, but we're hoping to get as many awesome ones as possible.


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## Lwaxy (Feb 6, 2013)

Ah, that makes a GM's life a lot easier.


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## bigeshu (Feb 6, 2013)

Agreed. Matter of fact, we're planning on the first supplement to be released shortly after the game's launch and we're picking a period of time in victorian england to fit the aesthetic we're using.


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## Lwaxy (Feb 11, 2013)

Nice. Do you take suggestions for more? 

Maybe not right away doing supplements for all of them but themes with link collections and book references (probably a forum on your site users can update when they find something interesting). This way, you will have ideas of different times and places people might be interested in, plus players and GMs have a way to share their knowledge.


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## bigeshu (Mar 1, 2013)

Lwaxy said:


> Nice. Do you take suggestions for more?   Maybe not right away doing supplements for all of them but themes with link collections and book references (probably a forum on your site users can update when they find something interesting). This way, you will have ideas of different times and places people might be interested in, plus players and GMs have a way to share their knowledge.



  Actually, we've found a webdesigner who we're negotiating with to create just that. Thanks for the suggestion!


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## Lwaxy (Mar 2, 2013)

Very cool


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## bigeshu (Mar 2, 2013)

Yeah, wish me luck on that! A forum and a .com for the game would be sweet!


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## Piratecat (Mar 2, 2013)

So this looks really interesting, but I don't know much about it. How are you handling the ripple effect? I loved TimeMaster, but holy crap on a stick, modules were complicated; you needed to research the particular era, choose something that the bad guys would change, and think about all the ramifications of that change throughout history. Crazy complex, and I've never seen anyone get around it convincingly.


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## bigeshu (Mar 2, 2013)

That is actually the hardest part of it. To handle the characters effects on their own lives we decided that those who can project (hijacking past people's bodies), are outside of time. So they can never be directly affected except by paradox fluxes and such.   For adventures we write beyond the playtest, we're thinking of playing connect the dots and what-if. Basically the best of quantum leap and sliders.  We were thinking that the worst paradox effects, basically rewriting a person's direct history, could be handled by chart, but we decided not to include that in the main book because dicking with temporal upstarts shouldn't be relegated to a chart that could never feel complete enough. But, examples will be had.


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## Piratecat (Mar 2, 2013)

I'll be really interested to see how it comes out. The only other good time travel game I know of is Epidiah Ravachol's Time & Temp, the game about low-paid incompetent temporary workers solving time travel problems. 

My favorite TimeMaster scenario: "Miss Him, Miss Him," where aliens kill Paul McCartney and replace him with a duplicate that steers the Beatles away from drugs and protest music. The popular anti-war protests never occur, America never bails out of Vietnam, nuclear weapons end up being used, and half of America is irradiated by the early 70's. Your job? Go back in time and make sure that the Abby Road "Paul is dead" rumors never have a basis in fact.


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## bigeshu (Mar 2, 2013)

Oooh I think I'll have to look up TimeMaster. But it's that kind of scenario that this game is intended for.


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## Piratecat (Mar 2, 2013)

I think old adventures (which definitely have some flaws) can be found at https://www.rpgnow.com/index.php?cPath=2033_6388&.


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## bigeshu (Mar 2, 2013)

Thanks I'll pick them up and flip through them.


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## Lwaxy (Mar 2, 2013)

I've done lots of time travel games, and I never found it so difficult to change the timeline accordingly. But then I have a weird brain. 

Also, it's a game, doesn't have to be 100% accurate.


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## Piratecat (Mar 3, 2013)

Lwaxy, that's kind of the point, right? It doesn't have to be perfect, but most of the joy in any kind of an alternate history game is following the cause and effect of history's linchpins. I find that takes more research than any of my non-time-travel games do. That's not a bad thing, but I like to take it into account.

An interesting article: The Big Question: What day most changed the course of history? (some dumb answers, some great ones.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/the-big-question/309238/


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## Lwaxy (Mar 4, 2013)

Indeed, that's the point. 

My players have already taken the base idea of the game and modified the setting (without seeing the book yet lol) to fit into one of our worlds. Probably means I'll get the books eventually.


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## bigeshu (Mar 5, 2013)

*laughs* You mean my book? Ok I'm curious to see what you guys came up with?


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## Lwaxy (Mar 16, 2013)

It's going to take a while to figure it all out, but basically it's a world where magic and technology exists together and we had time travel and parallel universes show up before. Bit like Star Trek in a D&D universe, with some Star Ward mixed in. We didn't play in it for a few years now as we were out of ideas. Time to revive it


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## Piratecat (Mar 16, 2013)

Dammit. Now I can't stop thinking about time travel and campaign settings. 

Bigeshu, do you have a feel for when the game will be available to the general public who didn't Kickstart it?


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## bigeshu (Mar 16, 2013)

Well, I will admit I'm looking for playtesters. But beyond that, We're shooting for a June release, but it's being sent to an editor in the next week or two so it may be sooner than that.


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## Piratecat (Mar 16, 2013)

I'm messing around with an unrelated time travel game, so I won't volunteer as a playtester--it wouldn't be fair. I'll be excited to hear play reports, though.


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## Lwaxy (Mar 16, 2013)

My bunch of no-good gaming fools (their own description) would probably jump at the chance, especially as the 5e craze has died down a bit.


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## bigeshu (Mar 16, 2013)

Well then let me dust off the playtest adventure. Shoot me a pm with group numbers and if your guys prefer pre-gens or not.


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## bigeshu (Apr 5, 2013)

We have our first playtest report in!

I'm waiting for the full write-up to share, but the players had a little difficulty with determining order of actions and believe that the rules, as is, creates characters with too low a chance for success on actions. The scenario that I gave them was to push The Pig War into an actual violent conflict between Britain and America with the intended goal of preventing the Civil War from happening by providing both sides a shared enemy.


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## Lwaxy (Apr 7, 2013)

Oh that is one set up I'd probably not thought of.


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## bigeshu (May 8, 2013)

Well, the game is now released. It's available at Drivethrurpg on PDF, and Createspace and Amazon for print copies.

PDF: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/114276/Agents-of-Change
Print: https://www.createspace.com/3895444

My team decided that our first supplement will be Timeline: The Civil War and we'll likely do a Factions book to go into further detail on the two sides.


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## Piratecat (May 9, 2013)

Congratulations, bigeshu!

I'm surprised that you're just getting playtest reports in now, but the game is already released. Is that by design?


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## bigeshu (May 10, 2013)

More like Kickstarter being a cruel mistress. The feedback I've gotten this far has been incorporated when I found it useful. But mostly I wanted to be sure that I got to keep my promised deadlines.  I'm proud of the end result though, even if I had a few lesson learned moments.


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