Writers block for time travel game series

[Specko19]

Hello everyone,

I am suffering some serious writers block. I started off my season game with Charity Carpenter in need of help from a local group of for hire wizards and the like. The group was made up of a Harry Dresden fan boy warden. This character is a thaum wizard, who obviously wants to be as good and awesome as Harry but just isn't there yet. Did I mention he is a warden   we also have a young girl who is a playing a private eye teenage who is using photomancy and last but not least we have a chromomancer.

The series I am writing is based on the chromonancer traveling back in time to stop an event from occurring however due to the spell going wrong, she does not know the "thing" she has to stop. Now where I am stuck is the first game ended off with them finding out there will be some sort of massive ritual in the next year, is it crazy to call each game a month time lapse from the last to move the story quickly or should be it more like two weeks?

Also what kind of troubles can you see happening that involve the red court, the blacken danarians( who are after little Harry) and these crazy wizards and that a like for hire?

I had this beautiful story written up but with the one time modifications allowed to the characters they kinda derailed it and I am stuck haha.

Please help the game is Friday lol

[sdfds68]

You can do any amount of time skipping you want or need to get to the good parts of the story.

A piece of advice, however, is not to make huge or inconsistent time jumps without a reason. It can trivialize the player characters lives and problems, or the players' attempts to prepare for serious trouble when given time.

Since you've set the "big event" where all the action is after quite a bit of time, then maybe the story should be about the players getting ready to deal with it. Making allies in their hometown, seeking out information or equipment to help them with the inevitable battle. Setting up a counter ritual would be a pretty cool solution, as long as it was appropriately epic.

Side jobs are fine, but anything unrelated to the main story probably isn't worth spending more than a session over.  But example trouble from 'stock' bad guys could include
-Being blackmailed by an RCV into helping out with Red Court political plays
-One or more Denarians moving into the city and tearing it up looking for a coin that's been locked up by somebody with good intentions
-Ghouls acting like they usually do and eating lots of people. Maybe they're having a party?
-A Faerie steals one of the PCs names and starts pretending to be them, causing trouble for everybody
-Dr. Doom. ALL SHALL KNEEL BEFORE DOOM! Why? Because it's funny, that's why.
-A demons been kidnapping people around a hidden entrance to Undertown.
-An ordinary human arsonist seems to targeting the magical community.

[Taran]

Do they know what the ritual is for?

Having a year to mess with the ritual can lead to all kinds of adventures:

- find out who is doing the ritual and what ingredients they need
- stealing, destroying, people/ingredients/ritual links/making shady deals with fairies to make the ritual harder
- finding/stealing/buying/bartering to gain items to do their own ritual
-going on quests to find extremely rare information

As far as the chronomancer goes, I have one in my game I'm running.
He doesn't specifically go back or forward in time but does evo-thaum to put things right - if time gets messed up.  He left the game early, but I was using a mini-game to let him choose specific outcomes in the present.  The more outrageous the outcome, the harder it'd be.

So, 'being in the right place at the right time' to dodge a bullet would be a simple chrono block.  Choosing a time-line where a specific enemy 'happened to not show up' might be a mini-game between the enemy and the chronomancer or it might be narrated as part of the take-out.  And failure had huge consequences.  He never did a ritual where the party went back in time...because my game took place in the present....he didn't travel through time, instead, he could just messed up the present time-line.  His back-story had Kronos sending him to different places in time where he'd have to fix things.

I also did something else fun with his character.  I'll PM you because of spoilers for my players.

[Sanctaphrax]

You can use time-skips of whatever size you want, as long as the players are okay with it. If they don't particularly want to play out the events of a month, and you aren't gonna spring anything that needs to be played out on them during that month, why not jump ahead?

Anyway, it sounds like your story is rather mystery-esque right now. The players seem well suited for that, with all of their ritual magic and their PI character. So maybe embrace that, and make the story about learning what they need to stop and how to stop it.

The Denarians and the Red Court might know something, but they won't share their knowledge for free. Trying to get information out of them might be physically or morally dangerous.

Regardless, don't get too attached to your plans. Things tend not to go as planned.

[Specko19]

First off,

Thank you everyone who messages me or posted here, I truly appreicate it and think you are all the sweetest ever.

Now that my head is a little more in the game and I have been fed some amazing ideas I feel a bit more ramped up.  I was feeling a lot of pressure after my first game went off really well and they wanted a quick turn around on another.

So I am still struggling with my "bad guy" concepts but I have 48 hours to produce, or Ill make somethng up on the fly depending on how the players are reacting.


So my Chromonacer - she has traveled back in time to stop something that happened in her time line, the characters at this point believe it is some ritual which is based around Harry Carpenter.  I am going to play with that, while working with the characters it seems due to a time lapse and slightly messed up spell the whole coming back in time did not go over so well and our time traveler has lost her memory for why she is here.  She however remembers she is the gate keepers neice, has a piece of paper in her pocket telling her she needed to be a cafe and whom to meet there at what time. to play with this. I am going to use the first game (which is really the second) to mess with the chaacters.  Our Harry Dresden wannabe is going to have to face that even though he is a warden and wants to uphold this priveldge as he sees it he will have to take place in some risky business that may having walking the line of breaking laws.  Our trusty teen PI who is devoted to our wannabe is going to have to really find herself over the series and break free from leaning on his expertise and ideas. Now enters Chromo- she may find out that she has come back in time to stop her two new team mates from stopping her in the future from helping the ritual.  Of course by this time she will have probably developed a good relationship with them from different adventures they will go on.

Its going to be a topsy turvy mind spinning series of games but I have a vision and knowing the players they will really direct a lot of what I am hoping to see come out of the series

I think with the way these players interact I am going to do 2 week spreads between games. they are very devoted readers and players so this should be a lot of fun.  I can not wait to play Friday

[Specko19]

The Denarians and the Red Court might know something, but they won't share their knowledge for free. Trying to get information out of them might be physically or morally dangerous.

I am really looking forward to playing the Denarian side of this game and using the Redcourt as small villians in the mini archs of the story.  I am going to try to keep the mystery-esque feel to the game going for a bit to keep the suspense built up for when our guest appreance from Harry happens adn of course the unveiling of the plot line.

Also I dont know why I put some much thought into my plans, you are right, they never go as planned, hehe until they do

[bobjob]

I just had a fun thought. Maybe as fallen angels, the Denarians are cognizant of time alterations. They may not be able to make changes themselves and may not even tell their hosts, but they'll know every time it's altered in the slightest way. I'm kind of drawing inspiration from Dr. Manhatten on this one. He knew everything that would happen to him before it happened and would only react as appropriate.

[Specko19]

The game lastnight went off very smooth. everyone had such a goodtime I had to put games two and three into play, which where only a few ideas jotted dowm but the players really ran with it. My PI really had to use her skills, while My Warden was given a task that could lead to him breaking a law(depends on how he plays), my Chrono had a brief run in with Mauve, and they are pretty sure that someone out to get Marcone is working with the BD.  I amnot exactly sure how the story ended up drawing so many people into it but I do believe that its going to get really messy and really fun.  It was great having to think on my feet so much, I am very pleased that they took off and ran with it so well.  They have helped to build a very interesting story, now real it back in a bit for the next game and give them a bit more focus, 10 hour game and they still didnt want to stop.  thank goodness I have 2 weeks to prep

[Sanctaphrax]

Awesome.

[sdfds68]

Sounds like a cool game.