The Effects of Time Travel Using Consequences

[Lanodantheon]

This past session of GMing, I took my party back in time to 1934 Seattle. My players get to get into shenanigans...with Time. I could use some help with a system I'm going to use to model the effects of Time Travel.


Specifically I want to use a Time Stress Track. At the end of every Scene the Time Travelers make an "attack" against Time and Time defends against it. However, Time can't be "taken out" instead you have to mitigate the damage with Consequences which I think will be a great way to model "ripples in the currents of time".


Also, I wanted to allow my players logically to mitigate the damage by spending Fate Points. "We're going with the flow. That was supposed to happen."


Sounds good on its own to me, but I need help with 3 things:


1. How many stress boxes should Time get and how often should they be cleared out if at all ? Along with that, how should the strength of the attack be modelled and what would be the attack score?


At this point I'm considering like 5 stress boxes and never clearing out the Stress Track.
I was thinking the strength would be arbitrary case-by-case with no empirical scale. If anyone has use or has ideas for an empirical time scale I'd love to see it.


The attack/defense rolls would be straight dice.


2. I want to let players use Fate points to mitigate damage. Should this be 1 fate point negates all damage if they come up with a good story or just some of the damage?


I'm inclined to say all of the damage since they will probably get into trouble because of compels.


3. What should be the scale of time consequences?


I'm confused on this one.


I feel a Mild Time Consequence is a change that is mostly aesthetic that doesn't really change much.
Example: The Mall in Back to The Future. Marty McFly went back in time from "Twin-Pines Mall". The first thing Marty did in 1955 was drive over the farmer's Pine Tree. When he gets back to 1985 the Mall is now called, "Lone Pine Mall." That's a small change comparatively.


But after that I'm stumped. There are only 4 levels of consequences normally but for something as big of scope as this I'm willing to make more. Note that our game takes place in 2008ish and my players are in 1934 so they will be running into ancestors of one or more important characters.


I know the consequences I need though:


1. A Consequence that affects a Major Character like the Face of a Location. Like
a. changing the Face of a location into a non-Face,
b. replacing the Face of a location with another or
c. turning a non-Face into a Face.
2. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of a single Location.
3. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of the Whole City. (I hope it doesn't come to this.) 
4. A Consequence that affects the entire family line of a character. We have a few family lines in the game.
5. Similar to 4, a Consequence that affects the "Theme" or feel of an entire Organization.


Any input on this would be appreciated.

[Sanctaphrax]

I'm not sure I follow...

Is the idea that for every scene somebody spends in the past they roll an attack against time with consequences manifesting as changes to history?

If so, does Time have an unlimited supply of Consequences?

[Lanodantheon]

I'm not sure I follow...

Is the idea that for every scene somebody spends in the past they roll an attack against time with consequences manifesting as changes to history?

If so, does Time have an unlimited supply of Consequences?

Yes that is exactly it. Time doe indeed have unlimited consequences in this case.


I'm willing to clarify/change it to "Every scene where they interact with the past in a direct fashion" they roll an attack. One of the players is a Wizard who is stupidly good with Veils and I imagine their main strategy is to go everywhere under a Veil if they can. If they are passive observers for a scene I don't think they'd change anything.

[Sanctaphrax]

Okay, how about this.

Each time you travel back in time, assign Time a stress track. The farther back you go, the fewer stress boxes. This stress track doesn't clear until you return to the present or die.

At the end of each scene, roll a weapon 0 attack against Time. The more you've done to affect the past during that scene, the more accurate the attack. Time always rolls 0 to defend, but players can tag or invoke Aspects to boost its roll or to reduce their own.

If Time would be taken out, it instead takes consequences. It has an infinite supply of these, but nonetheless uses as few as possible against any attack.

A mild Time consequence is a small aesthetic change to the present. For example, a child is named after a time traveller or a song that would have been written instead isn't.
A moderate Time consequence is a meaningful change to the present or a little bit of damage to reality. For example, a local election goes differently or some children with no ancestors come into existence.
A severe Time consequence is a noticeable change to history or meaningful damage to reality. For example, Gore wins the election against Bush or the laws of physics are altered in a certain forest.
An extreme Time consequence is an alternate timeline or major damage to reality. For example, the Nazis win WWII or a Walker enters the world.